


Autumn in Detroit

by freakshow (oatmealcrisp)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Cop AU, Detective AU, M/M, Serial Killer, Suspense, Trans Characters, but not really, celestino has a wife and two kids and their names are phichit and yuuri, its just au all over the place shhhhh let it happen, mila is viktors partner, tfw u get kidnapped and they stick u on knife shoes, this probs gon get pretty graphic, trans!yuuri, yakov is viktors old partner whos retired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9017797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oatmealcrisp/pseuds/freakshow
Summary: In a world where Viktor Nikiforov was forced to retire early due to a leg injury, he sought work instead as a police detective in Detroit. Now a young skater with a poster of him on his bedroom door has gone missing and Viktor knows beyond a doubt it's the work of a man who's been brutally murdering professional dancers for years. It's impossible not to take this case personally. Viktor will find Yuuri Katsuki.





	1. We could cruise to the blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Riri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riri/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to completely rewrite this because i changed my mind completely on the circumstances??? anyways my urge to victimize yuuri is full tilt here folks but don't worry, he'll get his revenge in the end. i mean it might not feel like it but still yknow?  
> Viktor has dual citizenship and Mila immigrated awhile ago because Reasons. Reasons being international investigations are a pain in the ass to write and also research and multinational murderers don't spring up too often apparently???
> 
> Obviously I'm not a cop. Also I'm not from Detroit, or American for that matter but I've watched a lot of American cop shows! Here's to hoping this isn't too laughably unrealistic.
> 
> Anyways I hope you have fun c: 
> 
> not betad

It was something that happened to other people.

Yuuri huffed as he ran light and easy, his sneakers carrying him easily over puddles and his rain jacket tied securely around his waist. The misted Detroit skyline seemed almost mystical with Tchaikovsky playing in his ears, still so foreign even if he had been there for a little over a year now, and Yuuri reflected that maybe he was being silly but inside his own head it should be allowed.

It was 5:30 in the morning and his earliest class was three hours away, leaving him with almost enough time for a run, a shower and what Phichit called ‘gathering his spoons’ to prepare himself mentally for the long day ahead. Mostly this involved being quiet, planning to excess and wolfing down breakfast while Phichit bustled about and crooned to his hamsters before herding him out the door when it was time for them to leave. They thankfully had similar schedules and so Yuuri could be left to wile away time with daydreaming and fretting without worry of being late. Phichit was kind, and knew Yuuri was not at his best in the mornings, so he helped out in any way he could.

He was a good kid and it was hard not to think of Phichit as something of a little brother. He was fortunate to have found such a wonderful roommate through their coach.

The fine mist of rain dripped into his eyes and Yuuri blinked it away, slowing down to a walk to catch his breath for a moment and taking note of his surroundings. With the landmarks that he had forced himself to memorize (getting lost was Not an option) he figured he was about halfway through his run. The traffic was a never ending drone and there were several people out even at this hour of the morning, and Yuuri contented himself for a moment to simply watch until he was no longer panting. Shoving his soggy bangs out of his eyes, the young man gave his head a slight shake and resumed his run.

Exceptional circumstances aside, people rarely thought that the worst would befall them. Murder, kidnapping, assault, those were generally left to the distant realm of ‘other’, a sad headline separated from one’s own ego by a screen. Expectations revolved around the monotony of day to day life, schedules and plans with perhaps a thought toward traffic or long queues.

Despite his anxiety Yuuri was rather the same way. He often feared the worst, planned for it in drawn out hypothetical movies in his head with imaginative catastrophizing, but he didn’t genuinely expect it. 

The street he turned down was a narrow one that was frankly little better than an alley with crooked asphalt. Dumpsters and parked cars made the way even smaller, leaving barely a car's width to travel through. Yuuri often made sure to watch his step here due to cracks, potholes and (sometimes dangerous) litter, his eyes lowered to survey the ground for anything dangerous. The light was still low even with the streetlamps and cloud covered sun to guide by. Anybody would have missed it, even looking out for it.

Yuuri didn’t see the slim glinting trip wire until it was much too late.

He hit the ground hard, his forward momentum carrying him further in a brief slide. The sharp automatic cry had cut itself off with his impact with the ground, leaving Yuuri thoroughly winded and panting roughly in thick, wet wheezes through his grit teeth. Winter Dreams, Symphony No. 1 in G minor Op 13 played distantly, barely audible from where his earbuds had landed after they’d been ripped violently from his ears.

It took a couple of seconds for the shock to fade and the pain to hit. His voice creaked out in a fragile groan, lashes blinking open through the wet of rain, and he lifted himself carefully onto his elbows.  
His hands were scraped, a mild road rash carving up his right arm and probably his knees but the pain was worse, worst, in his left leg. His hand found his thigh, shaking slightly with the intensity of the hurt, and he shifted onto his side to peer over his hip with horror.

His dirty white sneaker was rapidly turning red from the ugly gash licking around the front of his ankle and Yuuri muttered a whimper as he picked himself up into a wavery sit, his hand slipping down further to grasp his calf gingerly and shakily. What the fuck kind of sick prank was this? 

Yuuri felt himself beginning to hyperventilate, a panic attack creeping into the edges of his 100 mile an hour thoughts when he heard a car door open and shut. Clicking footsteps made their way toward him and the athlete’s head snapped up, a plea for help on his lips until he saw the expression in the stranger’s eyes.

His heart dropped with terror. Yuuri scooted back quickly but the stranger was kneeling before him in an instant and catching him by the front of his shirt, withdrawing a syringe that shone wickedly in the low light. His gasp sounded like a scream to his ears and he shoved, kicked, a brief but bruising and bloodying scuffle ensuing as he tried to pry his way out of the hands grappling for him. 

When the needle finally stabbed into his neck Yuuri finally found the air to yell but it was short lived, the noise muffled when a hand clapped over his mouth and shoved his head to the ground. 

His strength was fading rapidly, kicking his terror to new heights and still he clawed and punched and kicked until his hands were batting kitten soft at the arm holding him captive. He blinked hard, fruitless in his efforts to remain aware, and muttered a low moan that was supposed to be a scream when he was released. A hand slipped through his hair before there was shifting, the grip sliding under his knees and around his back. Yuuri tried to stay awake, distantly feeling his head loll back as he was picked up but it fell away from him, soft and slick like silk, and he was gone.

~~~~

A file slapped the top of his desk, jerking Viktor awake and popping him upright with brief startle.  
“Good to see you awake.” The voice lilting with a Russian accent was snide. “Late night?”

Viktor whined softly, rubbing at his pulsing eyes, and winced up at the woman which stood before him. She was tall and slim, her red hair cut into a fetchingly curled bob, and her blue eyes glinted icily down at him, mouth tucked into a line of consternation. Viktor sulked at her.

“Why do you have to be so loud first thing in the morning, Mila!” He complained, scratching at his forehead. It was still aching furiously from his bout of drinking the night before, which was probably what Mila was referring to.

“It’s one in the afternoon.” The woman growled at him before giving her eyes a ferocious roll and shoving paperwork and coffee mugs aside to make room for her bottom on his desk.

“But that case you’ve been working for the past few years, there’s a new MP that fits.” She flipped open the cover of the light brown folder, tapping on the picture inside.

Viktor leaned forward, his gaze assessing.

It was a boy that peered up at him, Asian in descent, with soft cheeks and a cutting jawline. His black hair was cut short, bangs layered in a somewhat tousled fashion, and his large brown eyes were framed with bulky blue glasses. They were large enough to probably slide down his small nose regularly.

“Yuuri Katsuki, twenty one years old. Attends Wayne State University. He’s an international student from Japan and is a certified figure skater with a background in ballet.”

The victim profile fit then. Viktor sighed, all semblance of playfulness slipping from his features into one of cool seriousness as he tugged the folder closer, flipping through it. There wasn’t very much yet, just a missing persons report filed by a Celistino Cialdini, and a picture.

“He said in his last letter that it would be around this time when he’d pick his latest. The timing fits.”

“Right.” Viktor grabbed for his cold coffee and threw the rest of it down before turning to a desk drawer and tugging out his badge and firearm. Along with it came his ever present notepad and his favourite poodle patterned pen. “Let’s go then.”

Damn it all.

For the past three years, Detroit and the surrounding area had been mercilessly plagued by a series of brutal murders. Each victim was a professional dancer to some degree, and each victim showed up brutalized beyond recognizability.  
Sometimes, often, not even the teeth were left intact. The head area was always the worst affected. It was enough to make a rookie cop sick.

Viktor had been handed down this case from his former partner, an old surly man who had retired a few months prior. Even then when he hadn’t been leading it, the case had touched him on a personal level. How could it not, with his own background in the performing arts? And this time it had been one of his own, a fellow skater, who would likely be showing up in three weeks time, a mangled corpse with his pretty face beaten in so deeply there would be nothing left of it.

"Waiting on you, partner." Mila slid off the desk, throwing him a look over her shoulder as she clicked her way away.

The murderer would often send letters to the various NPO departments, full of bragging and pontificating, the works of a highly intelligent and highly deranged man. Along with the letters were, quite often, pictures. Polaroids, dated, the terrified person within named.

From what Viktor could tell there were three stages to this killer’s delusion. He would capture a dancer, male or female. He would make them dance for him. And then, gradually, he would start turning them into someone else.

Viktor wasn’t certain yet if this ‘someone else’ was a daughter or a wife but the person the killer was trying to emulate in their victims was definitely female and always, always by the end of it, the last photo the DPD would receive of the victim was said person in a wedding dress, dirty and torn and white, always the same one.

Because of this the victims always met with certain physical traits. They were of average height, usually between 5’6 and 5’9, had dark hair and dark eyes. Nine times out of ten they were pale skinned as well, and the only time Viktor had seen the killer deviate from this by abducting a lovely East Indian woman, she’d not even lasted a week.

It was all part of maintaining the illusion, Yakov had told him. Whoever this man was, he was missing somebody dearly and yearned for them hard enough to force unrelated people into her role. Eventually though, whatever facsimile of it he had managed would break and that was when the victim would die.

It showed rage, the old Russian had gone on to say, the force with which the victims were beaten to death. Pure and unadulterated, and it never failed to confuse Viktor because this man knew these people were not what he was making them. He said as much in the letters and on the photographs, at least some part of him was divorced from it so why so much anger? Why even bother in the first place?

Yakov did not know. Viktor didn’t either. All he could figure was that there was some other level to this, something they were missing and he was certain that whatever it was it would bust the case right open.  
It was pelting rain by the time they arrived at Cialdini’s address, the slight mist breaking out into a downpour. Mila rolled up her collar and together they rushed up the path into the relative dryness of the porch. It was a nice house, Viktor had to admit, with little signs of wear in the paint and a newer car in the driveway. Whatever Cialdini did, it was enough to save him from Detroit’s recession.

Mila didn’t bother knocking, going straight for the doorbell instead, and it wasn’t long before there were footsteps. The door opened, revealing the face of a middle aged woman with neat light brown hair and red puffy eyes.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

Viktor smiled and flipped open his badge, doing his best to exude warm comfort.

“We’re from the DPD and would like to follow up on the missing persons case a Mr Celestino Cialdini filed earlier?”

Confusion flickered across the woman’s features and she glanced back, giving him a moment to take her in further. The gold band on her finger suggested wife and her thick waist pointed toward a love pairing instead of one of vanity. She was dressed moderately well but casually and there wasn’t a touch of makeup on her pale face.

A comfortable marriage then.

“We’ve already spoken to the police?” She looked back at them, confusion apparent, but still opened the door to which Viktor nodded his thanks.

“It was transferred to us, and we would like to follow up with additional questions to get caught up, make sure we have everything.” Mila was working better at comforting the woman than he was, her youth and open expression working to soothe the bewildered brunet’s agitation.

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense. Celestino is in the living room with Phichit-oh, that’s Yuuri’s room mate. If you wouldn’t mind taking off your shoes please, I’ll just…”

Viktor blinked, then glanced at the carpet and nodded. It was maybe a little unprofessional to be going about in socks but it would be even moreso to track mud everywhere.

They followed shortly. The home was surprisingly free of any sign of children but there were a pair of cats that blinked lazily at them as they passed. Photographs still lined the beige walls alongside artwork and the living room, when they got there, was filled with floral furniture and doilies that wouldn’t look too out of place in his Babushka’s home.

“Who is it, dear?” The man on the couch had thick brown hair pulled back into a low tail, and a chin you could probably break rocks on. Beside him sat a devastated looking teen, his dark skin blotchy red and still wet with tears.

Viktor smiled. “We’re here to follow up on the missing persons report you filed regarding Yuuri Katsuki. If you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions…?”

“Of course not.” Cialdini nodded and turned to the boy curled up at his side. “Phichit, perhaps you should go into the kitchen with Angelica, this isn’t-”

“No! I’m staying!” The youth burst out and rubbed his eyes viciously, dropping his legs. He had an accent. Thai? “I-I can help!”

Viktor traded looks with Mila as they took seats on the remaining furniture. “It may be for the best if you did, young man.”

“I’m staying! Whatever you have to say I can-I have to-”

Helpless looks were exchanged all around over the distressed boy’s sniffling, and Mila sighed softly. Viktor grimaced lightly as he tugged his notebook out of his pocket, flipping it open to an empty page. 

“We won’t force it. But if it upsets you too much, you’re going straight to bed.” Cialdini said, his voice low and authoritative, and Phichit nodded in agreement.

The brunet sighed and gestured for his wife to sit next to him before turning to them. “What do you need to know?”

“Just tell us about him for now, we’ll ask questions as we go.” Mila smiled reassuringly. Unlike Viktor, she didn’t need a notepad. Damn her and her half-decent memory.

“Right.” Cialdini wrapped an arm about his wife, glancing at her before sighing softly and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Well. I became his coach about four years ago now and brought him over to Detroit so he could have access to better training facilities and a more hands on education.”

“His coach?” Viktor double checked, glancing up from his notepad, and Cialdini nodded.

“Yes. I’m Phichit’s coach as well. We were just gearing up for competition season when...well. Anyway. He’s from a little town in Japan called Hasetsu and had been training there but his previous coach felt that they’d reached the natural end of their relationship and called me in hopes I could take him to the next level of his career. The facilities over there were pretty slim so.” Cialdini shrugged, running his fingers through his hair. 

“What kind of relationship would you say you had with Mr. Katsuki?” 

“Ah, well.” The man looked startled and looked over at his wife before he sighed, his expression gentling some as he looked toward his lap. “A professional one of course, but when you’re ensuring the wellbeing and education of youths you get pretty close. Angelica and I don’t have children you see, we decided with all my travelling for work that it would be for the best, so I come to think of the kids I take under my wing as my own. And Yuuri’s such a good kid, it’s hard not to. Phichit too. I’m not coaching anyone else at the moment so we’ve become pretty tightly knit.”

Which explained why the teenager was here instead of wherever he and Yuuri lived. 

“They come over for dinner often. Sometimes Yuuri helps me cook,” Cialdini the Missus sighed with grief, bracing her forehead in her hand. “He really is such a good boy, it’s how we knew that something must have happened when he didn’t get home.”

“He goes out for a jog every morning.” Phichit finally spoke, seeming to anticipate their next question and indeed, answering it neatly. “At around 5 a.m. he’s out the door, and he comes back usually around six. He starts classes at about eight but he needs a lot of time to, well, fortify would be the word I guess.”

“How do you mean, Phichit?” The Russian accent still present in Mila’s voice rolled around the name oddly but Mila seemed entirely unbothered as she leaned in over her knees, fixing the boy with her full attention.

The youth in question grimaced lightly, tugging at a strand of his deep black hair in mild agitation. 

“Whatever you tell us won’t be betraying Yuuri’s confidance.” Viktor reassured him, setting his notepad down on his crossed leg and drawing the boy’s attention. “Everything we’re asking, we’re only asking so we can help him and bring him home.”

“...” The youth pushed his face into his knee and glanced up at Cialdini pleadingly. 

Viktor scratched a quick note next to Phichit’s (he really hoped he’d spelled it right) name. ‘Very close.’

“He has anxiety issues.” Cialdini spoke without hesitation though, with a look that expressed he was very familiar with it. “Not just the usual pre-performance jitters but the kind you medicate for. It affects pretty much every area of his day to day life and he’s prone to depression too. But it’s the worst when it comes to socializing so he needs a few hours to really gear himself up before he goes to school.”  
“Is he on medication?”

That could make this a lot more difficult. If Yuuri went into withdrawals in captivity it could lead to his end much sooner than they had anticipated. Viktor grit his teeth at the thought.

“He is. It’s one of the first things I insisted upon when we drew up our contract, it can screw with his performance. Something called...it starts with a z.”

“Zoloft.” Phichit mumbled into his knees and buried his face deeper to hide his eyes.

Shit.

Viktor notated it grimly, his eyes narrowing in thought. They were really going to have to kick up their investigation if that was the case and he saw a lot of sleepless nights in his future.

“But yes. He needs that or he can’t function, even with the medication. It helps manage his symptoms but it’s not the be all end all, and his insurance doesn’t cover therapy.”

“Have you noticed anything odd about him lately?” The redhead asked. “Excessive jumpiness, out of character behaviour…?”

Cialdini shook his head but Phichit lifted his own and narrowed his eyes in thought.

“He hasn’t really been acting weird, but there’s a guy I’ve seen around a lot who has been. I don’t think Yuuri really believed me, and I didn’t think it was anything either I just thought he, I don’t know, had a-a-” He gestured and wiggled a bit, mumbled something in Thai. “A crush? Is that the word?”

“Could you explain a bit more what you mean by that?” Viktor asked, perking up a little.

This was new.

“Well he looked at Yuuri a lot, like a real intense stare and he always seemed to be wherever we were when we were out shopping or whatever. He looked really old so I teased Yuuri that maybe he should consider getting a sugar daddy, I thought it was hilarious. You don’t think…”

“Could you please describe this man?” Mila asked intensely and Viktor noticed that Cialdini looked rather surprised. They hadn’t told him then, and he hadn’t noticed.

“Well, old. Like at least forty.” Celestino grimaced promptly and Angelica looked to stifle a soft laugh even through her sadness. “With grey and black hair, and a beard and moustache. And wrinkles around his eyes. He was tall and walked with a limp, and was kind of fat around the middle but kind of…”  
Phichit wiggled his shoulders a little, pursed his lips in thought before looking across at them.

“He moved like a dancer.”

Viktor felt his mouth go dry and met Mila’s eyes. She looked just as excited as he felt. Finally, finally they had a new lead.

The interview wrapped up shortly after that and arrangements were made to look at the small flat Yuuri and Phichit lived in. Angelica ushered Phichit to the kitchen despite his protests and Celestino followed them out into the downpour of rain.

Viktor was halfway down the steps before he realized that the man wasn’t following them and turned to look at him questioningly. Cialdini met his gaze unflinchingly, and he looked a horrible mixture of sadness, anger and resignation.

“You think it’s that serial killer. Don’t you.” 

Viktor found himself glancing wordlessly back at Mila and the redhead returned the gaze with an expression of uncertainty.

“I’m not ignorant. Yuuri and Phichit may not follow the news much but I do, and I also know that the police never work this fast to investigate some kid’s disappearance. Maybe the Japanese Embassy is breathing down your backs but even with that I didn’t think we’d be seeing or hearing anything for a couple days if not a week.”

His brown eyes narrowed and glinted sharply. Viktor forced his expression into implacability, giving away nothing.

“So you got to think it’s related to something you’re already investigating, and Yuuri...fits.”

“I’m not at liberty to say one way or the other Mr. Cialdini,” Viktor answered with rehearsed calm. “But we will let you know as soon as we discover anything. If we could be on our way?”

Celestino stared at them for a minute longer before shooting out a sigh full of restrained anger, nodding. 

“Fine.”

Even with the miserable mid day traffic the drive to the apartment block the boys lived in was a relatively short one. Not the projects but by no means the height of luxury either, it was a massive somewhat drab looking Brownstone they ended up parking in front of. Viktor habitually ignored the distrustful looks he was given, well aware the public’s trust in the police was very thin and his unique colouring immediately identified him as exactly what and who he was; Viktor Nikiforov, uncommonly young police detective.

What could he say, the media loved him.

Even in this weather there were people sat on the steps who were dodged easily. The stairs inside were long and unforgiving, causing Viktor’s knee to twinge in distaste and he hid his grimace with the ease of practiced skill. He’d been sixteen when he’d ruined any chances he’d had of competitive figure skating by taking a stupid risk that had ended up in a dislocated patella and torn tendons. It hadn’t, and wouldn’t, hobble him completely but he’d been ordered off the ice due to it. Ten plus years later if Viktor moved in a specific way he wouldn’t be able to feel his knee turn, and despite the exercises he did, stairs and humid weather always made it ache.

By the time they reached the door Mila was panting lightly and Viktor wasn’t that far behind. Celestino looked disgustingly unruffled by the haul, pulling out his keys and turning the lock.

For two young men the apartment was surprisingly clean. He’d been bracing for the impact of gross smells and leaning towers of pizza boxes, soda bottles, but instead he was met with gleaming counters, clean carpets and a sink completely devoid of dishes.

It was honestly weird.

Celestino must have caught his surprised look because he chuckled, sweeping his arm out in a gesture.

“Yuuri’s parents run an onsen, an inn cum bathing house and Phichit is just neat by nature. Surprising isn’t it? It’s not what I would have expected either.”

The man pointed them to the direction of the bedrooms, explaining who’s was who’s, and then stepped out. He didn’t seem all that eager to remain in his student’s empty home and Viktor couldn’t say he blamed him.

Taking out his notepad again and flipping it open, Viktor jotted down a couple notes.

‘Fastidious. Family run hotel.’ He and Mila separated, the redhead slipping over to the kitchen while Viktor headed for the bedrooms. A customary search of Phichit’s was completed, finding him a hamster cage and a swathe of comic books, posters, a bookshelf full of novels in Thai, and a framed picture of his family on his bedside table. 

Viktor ducked out. He really didn’t think Phichit had anything whatsoever to do with this but it was that kind of thinking that released guilty men and imprisoned the innocent, and so he remained determined to remain impartial and follow the evidence.

It was Yuuri’s room he was most interested in. Viktor likewise doubted there would be anything he could find that would give him a clue as to who their serial killer was but it was best to be safe.

And besides, he had to admit if only to himself, deep in the recesses of his mind, he was intrigued.

Viktor opened the door and was met with blue.

The bed was swathed in it, the shitty second or even third hand furniture painted a shade to match. The knapsack in the corner, while predominately black, had blue striping and the frames that held Yuuri’s most precious photographs were blue as well.

It was clear what the young man’s favourite colour was. Viktor felt his lips twitch into a faint smile.

He stepped in further, shoes sinking into the carpet. A set of clothes had been set out on the bed and he gandered at them. They were unexciting certainly, in plain colours without jaunty patterning, but the tee folded atop the flannel overshirt had a faded cartoon logo on it. It was becoming clear what kind of person Yuuri was; timid, insecure and unwilling to call attention to himself but open and honest when it counted.

There was a stack of business and hospitality texts on the desk next to a laptop and an opened notebook. He looked over them idly, noting that the writing seemed to be a jumble of Japanese and English as though the young man couldn’t quite keep up with translating as he went. Lecture notes probably. The margins were dotted with stars, the dots resultant of a pen impatiently tapping paper, a drawing of a poodle. It didn’t take long at all to spot the framed photograph of a much younger Yuuri beaming at the camera, his tiny arms wrapped around the neck of an equally jovial tan poodle.

Viktor’s mouth quirked into a lopsided smile helplessly, something unspeakably warm settling in his chest before he shook it off and continued in his search. It was one thing to get to know a victim and yearn to bring them justice and safety, and it was another entirely to get attached to a person you’d never met.

Blue glasses sat folded on the bedside table, next to an almost empty glass of water and a bright orange pill bottle. Tugging his latex glove flusher to his hand, the platinum haired man picked it up and read the label.

The dosage, the doctor’s name, the pharmacy it came from all went down in his notebook. There didn’t seem to be much else to really dig into but Viktor still checked the closet, the bookshelf, the potted plants on the windowsill before he turned to exit the room.

Viktor stopped dead, an indescribable feeling catching heavy on his shoulders.

A poster of himself was hung proudly on the back of the door, in the skating costume he’d made his senior debut in. The bottom corner was autographed and the sides were gently curled. Yuuri had owned this poster for a long time.

He felt breathless. He felt angry. He felt unspeakably sad. Overwhelmed, Viktor blinked hard and closed his eyes, ducking his head and burying his mouth in his hand.

Somehow this had just become personal.

He took a moment to just breathe and focus on not crying before lifting his head and returning his gaze to the poster. The steel resolve around his heart tightened, and Viktor clenched his fists.

“I’ll find you.” He vowed, then slipped out the room with a lingering backwards glance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 1 end! pls tell me what u think~  
> this is probs gonna be a long one but now that im on break i should have lots of time to dedicate to writing this monster that's completely taken over my brain for the entire month im ngl
> 
> I still intend to write snippets for He Won but I wanna get this up n out!


	2. Wilshire Boulevard if we choose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, uh, first, uh, WOW  
> i don't think i've ever gotten such immediate overwhelmingly positive feedback? like seriously guys, whoa I'm just  
> shocked and delighted  
> y'all are wonderful quq
> 
> i wanted to get this out yesterday but uh, whoops I STILL HOPE U ENJOY THIS SOMEWHAT BELATED XMAS PRESENT
> 
> happy holidaysssss i hope you enjoy!
> 
> STILL UNBETAD

It felt like dragging his brain through oatmeal.

The first thing Yuuri really became aware of was that he felt absolutely unwell. His mind couldn’t grasp a single thought and everything looked utterly bizarre. He twitched in an attempt to move but there was nothing for it and so he laid where he woke, mindless and numb and blinking slowly.

His muddied thoughts returned before his body did. 

He had been on his morning jog. Yuuri’s fingers crawled through dirt, tightening slowly into a fist. He had been on his morning jog, halfway through it in fact, and had turned to go home when-  
Had he tripped? It somehow didn’t seem quite right, the supposition, and the brunet closed his eyes with a thick breath. At the same time he knew he also hadn’t been pushed, but he felt in the depths of his gut that he hadn’t been responsible for the fall.

Yuuri blinked again, his eyes raw, his lids like sandpaper. No, he could see it now. There had been a wire and then-

His heart sank, concrete in the hollow of his stomach and he squeezed his eyes shut, sucking in a painful breath.

No. No no no. Another breath, and another until his throat was catching in rough sobs, fingers dragging through the dirt until his nails cracked and broke. He cried, he hyperventilated until his arms and legs tingled ferociously. He sobbed until there was nothing left to give, his tears and drool turning the thin soil under his face to mud.

Yuuri didn’t think he’d ever felt so utterly spent in his life. The migraine was terrible, seemed to spread through his stomach and down his limbs but he still forced his body to move, crawling upright and pulling himself haphazardly to the muzzy shadows of a wall. He shoved his back against it, heaving ruggedly and turned his eyes around.

Yuuri noticed one thing immediately. His contacts were gone. The second thing he noticed was the dark and the third, his clothes.

They were not the ones he’d left in this morning. With trembling fingers and a slack mouth he pinched the flesh toned leotard, peered down further until his eyes hooked upon the pearly satin ballet shoes cuffed to his feet.

Yuuri’s mouth was unspeakably dry and he reached down, his fingers scrabbling over the thick manacles and chains. He pulled and punched at them, blunt nails scrabbling with increasing insanity until he screamed, voice knocking back into his skull with teeth wrenching intensity. He screamed, and screamed again until his voice was cracking and his considerable athlete lungs had run out of air.

He’d been stolen.

The fervor passed, leaving Yuuri panting raggedly against his kneecap, arms clutched tightly around his middle. Phichit’s sweet face swam through his mind’s eye, followed rapidly by his parents, his sister, his fucking dog. He wanted nothing more than to hold Vicchan close, sink his fingers into his poodle’s curls and breathe him in and never let go.

He wanted to hug his mother.

What he didn’t want was to be trapped, undressed, manacled and chained. Yuuri tore his fingers through his hair and forced himself to look around. His eyes were slowly adjusting even without his contacts, pulling the dark into a semi-tolerable state. There really was nothing.

Nothing except a creaky looking chair, and even more darkness beyond that.

The brunet swallowed dryly and strained his ears to listen for something, anything, but again found nothing. He reached down to fist the thick chain, gave it a rattle.

The sound echoed. Wherever he was, the space was large.

There was a bizarre sense of clarity rapidly unfogging his mind, pulling his senses into an astonishing focus. Yuuri breathed in through his nose, lips pulling in tight against his teeth and shifted, rattled the chain again.

There was actually a decent amount of give. It was long then, he guessed. If he was going to be forced into dancing, which seemed likely, it did make sense.  
But…  
It was impossible to forget. His ankle was throbbing with the sharpest pain he’d felt since he’d broken his arm in fifth grade and the gore that covered it was…

Well. 

It had stopped, Yuuri noticed with relief, but there was just a ridiculous amount of red painting his ankle, staining the satin of his shoe even. It was probably only the swelling that made it look not quite as bad as it felt because his foot and ankle were purple, and easily twice their usual size.

How was he expected to do anything at all like this?

His fingers twitched with the urge to touch but Yuuri ignored it, rolling instead onto his opposite hip and shuffling to follow the chains. It didn’t take long to find the ring they were attached to and Yuuri bit his lip hard, feeling around it.

“Wait…” His whisper was atrociously loud in the unearthly quiet and Yuuri’s eyes widened as he examined the ring by touch.

Suddenly he felt cold.

There were grooves a nails width wide scarring the metal, barely visible to the pads of his fingertips. 

There were so, so many.

“Oh God…” Yuuri whispered numbly, horror making him shiver. “Oh my God.”

~~~~

Viktor joined Mila in the bathroom where she was going through the medicine cabinet. 

“There’s not much here. Just your typical tylenol, cold remedies.”

“Katsuki keeps his medication in his bedroom.” Viktor nodded, peering in after her before turning and absently tugging the shower curtain aside. Like the rest of the apartment the shower inside was clean, if not perhaps the best kept. The old tub was stained, rust and other substances left by former tenants discolouring the chipped porcelain. 

He glanced at the grout, the shower head, let the cheap plastic drift shut.

“Right, that makes sense...But this really is odd. Two young men who are this neat and clean? I can barely manage my laundry!”

Viktor managed a chuckle as Mila swung the mirror shut, catching his reflection in the mirror. He looked pale.

“I think that speaks more to your housekeeping skills than theirs, Mila.”

“Shut the fuck up, Niki. What did you learn?”

“He’s quiet,” Viktor spoke as he flipped back to the start of his notes. “Introverted. Probably comes across as vulnerable.”

“Easy pickings.” Mila nodded and they stepped out of the bathroom, making their way back into the livingroom. Viktor nodded.

“Very intelligent, fiercely compassionate, self conscious to the extreme. His self-esteem is very low.” The detective continued, reading off his list. “And his emotional IQ is likely very high. Of course he’s fit but the disparity of clothing sizes he owns suggests he’s prone to gaining weight.”

“That’s not a lot that could help us…”

“No, it’s not.” Viktor sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. “And of course there’s nothing in his belongings that I could find which could point us toward his attacker. Do you read Japanese Mila?”

“No, of course not.” The redhead shook her head, her coppery curls bouncing about her delicate chin.

“We’ll need to find someone who can. He writes in Japanese more than he writes in English and there might be something…”

“It’ll take us weeks to find an available interpreter.” She grimaced. Her red lips matched the shade of her hair almost exactly. 

“Cut it down to days.”

Viktor found his eyes turning out the windows, streaked with age and silvered by the poor light. The sills too were lined with plants, tiny succulents, spiders, grasses and a single pot of petunias. The television was old, a beast from the 90’s and the couch was frayed, stained, smelled softly of cigarettes.

Viktor blinked and made a slight double take, stepping forward and giving a delicate sniff. He could feel Mila’s eyes upon him, intense and somewhat confused but following him as he dropped to his knees and ran his fingers through the thick fibers of the carpet.

“What is it?” 

“Do you think that two young, professional athletes would be the type to smoke, Mila?” The detective asked as he rubbed the ash between his fingers, dipping his nose back in to give the cushions another whiff. “Cialdini doesn’t smoke either, there wasn’t a single ashtray about the place. So why does the couch smell like cigarettes?”

He looked up and rose gingerly, showing his fingers to the younger woman. “And why are there ashes in the carpet?”

Viktor could feel it, excitement singing through his blood, and he was certain his face showed it.

“Our killer is getting sloppy.”

It had been bound to happen eventually, Viktor and Yakov had been sure of it. Three years was a long time to evade the police, getting away with murder. Taunting the police via letters, photographs, spoke to an arrogance that would be the downfall of their man.  
Viktor had always known this. But the waiting game had claimed too many lives, gone on for too long and despite the rush he felt, he felt guilt as well.

Viktor knew though, that he could use this. Extra motivation, as if he needed anymore.

The poster hung on the door of an empty room was more than enough.

Mila’s grin was toothy and vicious.

“Finally.”

The excitement didn’t last long.

Days later and the new hints had gone absolutely nowhere, relegated to the back of Viktor’s notepad as though they were meaningless, forgotten. Asking neighbours had resulted in nothing, no further descriptions, no sounds to give them an idea of a timeline. Phichit, bless the teen, was staying with Celestino under their advice. 

Traffic and security cameras showed them the route Katsuki used in his morning runs, and a store owner confirmed Phichit’s given timeline. Yuuri would come in a quarter to six, panting and sweaty, and purchase a single ham and cheese stuffed bun. They were oily and greasy, and according to Cialdini, probably the only treat he really allowed himself. Yuuri was on a strict diet. He tended to gain weight easily, the man explained further, confirming Viktor’s suspicions.

On the morning he had been reported missing, Yuuri hadn’t shown.

In conjunction with the footage timestamps it solidified their timeline. Yuuri Katsuki had been abducted at approximately 5:30 a.m., halfway through his run.

His assailant had chosen his timing well. The beginning of the route was hilly, but the lack of slopes in the second half would have allowed him a cool down to rejuvenate. Striking halfway through when Yuuri was tired and unable to put up as much of a fight as he otherwise could have spoke further to the killer’s intelligence, and possibly also to his physicality. 

This was a common theme. Several of the other victims had been stolen in much the same way.

“This is probably where it happened.” Viktor looked around, carding his bangs away from his face.

The alleyway was downright tiny and clogged with vehicles, making it even smaller. It was likewise poorly lit. The tall buildings jutting upward on either side made it difficult for the streetlight illumination to get in.

Mila nodded and sighed, scuffing the ground with her shoe, her hands tucked tight into her pockets. It was getting chillier by the day, autumn taking Detroit with force, and rain was common to make it even colder.

“Between the weather and how long it’s been we’re not going to find anything.” The redhead mourned, pulling her hair behind an ear.

“It doesn’t hurt to look around though. And who knows,” Viktor’s voice was low as he peered up the side of the apartment building next to them, nodding toward it. “Maybe someone saw something.”

“Even if they did they probably won’t talk to us.”

Viktor spun on his heel and gave Mila a bright, wide smile. She immediately frowned at him, suspicious. How rude. “Not to me they won’t!”

Mila’s expression contorted rapidly into one of jaundiced exasperation, her pretty eyes narrowing. Viktor took a moment to admire the woman’s makeup skills. The gentle smoulder of her brown eyeshadow and black liner lent a deadly quality to her glare.

In the end she capitulated, heading up alone to question more than a few residents while Viktor remained in the alleyway, his smile fading. He took a steadying breath and pulled out his notebook.  
For a moment the only sound over the traffic was the rifling of thin, cheap paper.  
Finally he hit a blank page, scrawled the date and time across the top, the address of the alley he stood in, and began his search.  
His lack of a warrant didn’t stop him from snooping in and around public property and so the detective made a short sweep of the area before beginning anew from the opposite side, thoroughly this time. Trash bags and cans were nudged carefully by his shoe, detritus kicked about. Rapidly the shine of his brown oxfords became stained, mud and puddle water seeping into his thin black socks and chilling his feet. The knees of his slacks grew sullied as he crouched to shine his flashlight under the many vehicles, most of them looking as though they’d not been moved, much less started, in years.

Viktor was beginning to think his partner had gotten the better end of the stick. Like Mila had said there was nothing that stood out so many days after the abduction but it didn’t hurt to try. He had no idea what he was looking for anyways, nothing outside of a mysterious something that might, if he were lucky, point him in a new direction.

The amount of discarded cigarette butts taunted him. Viktor glared at them balefully before uttering a sigh of defeat, standing carefully from his crouch and brushing off his knees. The dry cleaning bill was going to hurt his wallet, he knew, but…

Soft looking eyes the shade of fresh cinnamon floated through his memory, framed with blue and in them, his own visage smiled from the glossy paper of a poster hung faithfully on the backside of a dented door. Viktor eyed the crooked, cracked pavement through hooded lashes, absently flipping his notebook shut and pressing it back into the pocket of his long coat.

It was worth it.

They reconvened in a coffee shop not too far away, a hole in the wall that served its drinks with the grinds and reeked of grease, big hearts.

“Nobody saw anything.” Mila took her coffee black. She spoke over the brim of a generic white mug with a cheerful blue bird printed on the side. “Nobody heard anything. One woman said her son had found a phone and headphones the other day but it was too water damaged to do anything with so they threw it out.”

Viktor stirred in a third spoonful of sugar into his own cup, his pale reflection glinting up at him from the heavily creamed drink. Perching his chin on his hand he sipped at it and promptly upended an unhealthy amount of sugar into it straight from the bottle.

“You’re going to kill yourself with all that sugar, old man.” 

“Shut up, Mila.” Viktor responded bitterly in Russian, then sighed and leaned heavily against the rickety back of his chair. “No, I didn’t find anything either. But it never hurts to be too careful right?”

“Right.” The woman across from him looked deeply into her mug, cupped firmly between her two hands as though its warmth might seep into her. “...Can I ask you something, Viktor?”

“What’s that?” He answered with a blink of curiosity and mild concern.

“You seem different.” Their eyes met across the plywood table. “Like something’s bothering you. Did anything happen, or…?”

“...No.” Viktor tucked his bangs behind his ear, afforded his partner a genuine but small smile. “Nothing happened. This one just feels a little personal is all.”

“Because he’s a figure skater?” He nodded. “You’re not letting that, like, cloud your judgement or anything are you? This isn’t going to…”

The man understood at once what she was getting at and scratched the back of his scalp roughly with a tight grimace.  
Get too personally invested and it could interfere with the case, could even have it lost from them, transferred to some other detective who had neither the experience or the will to bother that he did. Viktor didn’t want that to happen anymore than Mila did. He couldn’t afford it.

“I won’t let it get that far, Mila.” Reaching out he gave her wrist a soft pat. “Don’t worry.”

For some reason Viktor couldn’t put his finger on, it felt like he was lying.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

He couldn’t tell her, wouldn’t tell anyone, that he could already feel his yearning to give Yuuri freedom was already morphing into something much more deadly.

Viktor’s hand retreated. He tugged back a sleeve, peering down at the shiny rolex watch wrapped around his wrist. It had been a present from his mother when he had graduated the police academy and he wore it everywhere, even if the clock on his phone was equally accessible. 

It had been four days. Yuuri’s withdrawals had probably started by now. 

‘Just hold out a little longer for me, Yuuri.’ Viktor found he couldn’t refer to the man by his surname to keep a professional distance, couldn’t muster the strength. ‘I’ll find you soon.’

“Viktor.”

Viktor’s eyes shot up, his partner’s tone of voice startling him out of his musings. The redhead’s expression was grim, and her phone was in her hand.

“We need to get back to the station. The first letter has come in.”

The media had dubbed them ‘The Dancer Letters’. They were never handwritten, or even computer printed, punched out instead on thin paper with a typewriter. Often they were pages long, filled with the ramblings of insanity, clipped together out of order with a single heavy staple.

They described with intensity the victim’s actions, their apparent emotional states, injuries they had suffered by the assailant’s hand and how he could often hear them screaming and sobbing for hours underneath his floorboards. Purple was waxed when he compared them each to the woman he’d lost, counting down their flaws steadily and finding them all wanting. His own thoughts were written in consistently and if the rest of the ghastly writings didn’t lend themselves toward his state of mind, these did.

_They ended the first night. That is to say, his caterwauling did. I fear this might be due to the sudden illness which has gripped him.  
I watch him for hours. He twitches like he’s seizing and is unable to keep down anything but the thinnest of broths. He cries, and sleeps, and cries again. I can only postulate this is because I neglected to take his medication with me and that these are SSRI withdrawals. _

_Yet still, he dances for me. I don’t know from where he draws this strength but he does it wonderfully. Each performance is a delight, moreso now that I’ve learned he can do pointe work. He is the first man I have known in these past years to do so and I am made joyous. His instructor must be very progressive._

_I feel as though we are getting to know each other well, and that we will continue to learn the other even better in these next weeks to come. He’s already picking up on what I enjoy the most and manages it with aplomb. I, on the other hand, have learned that he shall make a wonderful bride. I know immediately that despite his sickness I am very much going to enjoy this honeymoon._

The sheaf of papers was thick, a common occurrence when the killer had found a victim he really enjoyed, and described in detail everything which had gone on the past four days. This was less common, it was almost as though they had more time to spend on this ghoulish pastime. 

Viktor’s office chair creaked softly under his weight as he shifted, toes rocking him side to side, as he regarded the letter with a hand over his mouth. The station was dark and there were only a handful of people left. It was late now, getting onto eleven at night, and he knew he was going to need to head home soon. But he had other work to catch up on, more cases than just this stacked on his desk that required his attention.

So now that he was finished the reams of paperwork he’d neglected over the past handful of days, Viktor found himself reading, again, the letter which had reached the station earlier this afternoon.

The polaroid which had come attached was equally brutal. His eyes fell upon it again, pushing his mouth deeper into his palm.

Yuuri peered up at him through the fingers of his palm, squinting away from the light. His skin looked slicked by sweat, smudged heavily by dirt and dust, and his hair stuck up in tufts.  
It was his left foot that made Viktor grimace though, a sympathy pang rushing through his own.  
It was violently swollen and slicked red, copper with wet and drying blood. It was a common injury in the man’s victims. Yakov had told him it was the result of a tripwire. It never failed to make Viktor wince.

It was cruel torture to force people to dance on such a terrible injury. It was crueler still to make them do so when they were painfully ill on top of it all.

Setting down the papers he picked the polaroid up instead. If, no, when he did find Yuuri, he knew that it would be impossible for the young figure skater to ply his sport, much less dance at all, ever again. It would be physically impossible.

The last four days had lit a burning curiosity in him, which he’d refused to indulge in. It wouldn’t do to foster any further this bizarre attachment he was beginning to develop toward the younger man and so he’d barred himself from it. But in the darkness of the office with only the key clicking of one other person it was hard to resist.

Viktor turned to his laptop, woke it up and pulled up youtube, clumsily typing into the search bar. He muted the sound, clicked on the first result.

He found he didn’t need the music at all. Yuuri exuded it from his every sway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eugh writing even that lil portion of the letter was just  
> shudder  
> uhg i feel a little greasy now lmao
> 
> i hope you enjoyed! thank you for reading!


	3. Whatever you want to do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this is kind of a fillerish chapter. investigation going at a snail pace and some more naval gazing with a diary entry at the end from our poor yuuri. We should have an arrest next chapter though, wink wink!!
> 
> here's to hoping i did the DSC justice, being that I've never been there, much less in the States lmao
> 
> And I wanted to thank you all again for your wonderful words! the feedback is just outstanding, you're all lovely~~ 
> 
> Hopefully I'll be able to keep up this 'new chapter every couple of days' pace. Wish me luck!!!
> 
> STILL NOT BETAD  
> or proofread all that much
> 
> AAAA i almost forgot to throw this in here!!! ━Σ(ﾟДﾟ|||)━  
> TY SO MUCH TO BOBETTE FOR YOUR WONDERFUL SUGGESTIONS  
> if anyone else has anything to add or offer please don't hesitate to say!!!!

Yuuri did not know for sure for how long he’d been here.

What he did know was that somehow, in spite of his circumstances, he was adjusting.

He learned to count time by the man’s schedule. Twice a day he would be fed soup. The water jug he’d been given would be refilled once a day, between meals. And twice a day the bucket he’d been given to, well, expel his bodily wastes into, would likewise be taken away and emptied. By this count, Yuuri tentatively and generously guessed he’d been here between four and seven days.

Unless, that was, the man was knowingly doing this in such a way to wrongly inform his sense of time.

Yuuri decided to just ignore that possibility if only for the sake of his sanity.

He was also beginning to notice things.

The soup was a bowl of plain chicken broth, which also tasted slightly of lemon and would be placed easily within his reach. It took him some time to suss out why the flavours tickled something in his memory but it eventually hit him. Between the salt in the broth and the lemon juice added to it, his captor was purposefully maintaining his electrolyte levels.

He would dance in order to receive his meal, then the man would retreat back to his chair and watch. He wouldn’t touch and he wouldn’t speak. He’d just watch, a slightly darker smudge in the distant pitch.

Between all of this it was almost as if his captor cared for his wellbeing. Which was patently ridiculous because, well. No explanation needed there.

It was honestly bizarre. Yuuri didn’t know what to think. He’d been expecting some American Chainsaw Massacre type shit to happen, not this almost-kindness. 

However, that didn’t mean Yuuri was going to allow himself to come off guard. It actually only encouraged him to learn more. If he could somehow manipulate this to his benefit, if he could wrangle any kind of power out of this situation, it would impact his likelihood of surviving significantly.

If he could get this man to sympathize with him, Yuuri was confident he would walk out of this alive.

Yuuri had never thought like this in his life. He’d never sought to actively manipulate someone, to twist something, to hurt. He couldn’t stand the very thought, it made him ill with self-disgust.

But he knew who this was now. Or he was pretty certain he did anyway. And death was definitely on his horizon. At the dancing studio and the skating club, even among the street dancers there had been talk of a serial killer who targeted professional dancers. He was an animal, they said, what he did was utterly horrific. The longest anyone had lasted in this man’s ‘care’ had been something like three weeks, according to the gossip he’d overheard. Their corpse would be found a day after that mark, beaten to death.

Sometimes, if something went wrong, they’d be found dead even sooner. And Yuuri knew that, with the way he’d been feeling, he could easily become one of them.

Because he was in withdrawls now, and after years of being reliant on his medication it was bad.

It was so bad.

Yuuri didn’t think he’d ever felt sicker in his entire life and with the bizarre zapping sensation and his foot on top of this, it was an understatement to say that he was in a world of discomfort.

No. It was hell. A terrifying, painful, anxiety roasted ‘I want to die’ kind of hell. When he wasn’t crying from the sheer agony of it he slept, and then he would wake up and cry again. Sometimes silently, sometimes vocally, but it felt like all he was doing was crying.

The only comfort he was getting was one that was coming on slowly. Yuuri didn’t know what it was, he’d never felt anything like it before but it was-it was…

Yuuri felt like a ghost in his own body.

His limbs were strangers, they didn’t belong to him. They looked unfamiliar, felt alien and sometimes it seemed as though he couldn’t even move them. Yuuri would watch his hand, close to his face so he could actually see it somewhat properly, and twitch his fingers just to reassure himself that it was actually his own and not some unfamiliar limb that had been grafted into his field of vision.

It was a constant state of surrealist dreaming, except that he was awake. Or Yuuri was pretty certain he was awake. Relatively certain. 

But it did allow him to think with a clinical sense of detachment and that, at least, was one blessing.

If Yuuri was going to get out of this alive, he needed his brain.

Whether or not he would succeed when so many others hadn’t, he didn’t know. The nail and even teeth marks he’d felt on the ring keeping him prisoner were a constant reminder that there had been a lot of people who had come before him and all of them had died. People who were smarter than him and stronger than him with different skillsets and lifestyles that made the probability of Yuuri being the one to actually escape nearly nill. 

Good leg pulled up against his chest, bad leg stretched out and pathetically elevated against the empty water jug, Yuuri stared blankly toward the ceiling.

He was still going to try.

Damn it all, he was still going to try.

Yuuri just refused to die by the hands of a man who was forcing him to shit and piss in a bucket.

“Couldn’t you have at least installed a toilet? Jerk.” He sighed toward the ceiling and closed his eyes.

~~~

Day five began in a flurry of activity. A couple of CSIs had finally been given to them now that they’d found something solid, and not for the first time Viktor cursed both the prevalence of crime and their in-comparison slim manpower. Supply and demand was just not balanced, and it didn’t work well in their favour.

Mila was overseeing the investigation in the boys’ apartment while Viktor drove alone to the skating club Celestino used to train his athletes. Conveniently, the Detroit Skating Club was the only one of its kind in the area and that made finding it easy. Sort of. 

Thank the technology Gods for siri and google maps because Viktor had avoided even thinking of the club since he’d moved here, so many years ago.

The building was a plain, rectangular looking beast with a blue awning and entryway, above which was a reader board that cheerfully wished its skaters good luck. Judging by the ladder being set up, this was shortly going to be changed.

He parked his car, a tired looking black Ford sedan, cut the ignition and took a moment to breathe and compose himself. His gloved fingers squeaked ever so slightly on the steering wheel as he tightened his fists and Viktor rested his head against the back of his seat, his eyes closed tight and a frown digging sharply into his features.

This would be the first time he’d be setting.foot in an ice rink in almost ten years, just a couple shy. Viktor opened his eyes and gazed toward the building for a moment before sucking in a breath and mentally pulling up his socks. He slapped his cheeks, peeled off his gloves, stepped out of the car and shut the door. He double checked he had everything he needed, running through his mental checklist as he patted his pockets, and locked the car.

He guessed he had to get this over with.

There had been a lot of fussing, in deciding who would be hitting up the skating club. Mila had straight up not wanted him to go, fully aware that just being close to a rink had a decent chance of throwing him off but Viktor had insisted. Of the two of them he was more experienced, and the better of them at reading people. It just made sense that he should interview the multitudes of members and staff who might, hopefully, be able to point him toward their man. He was a professional. He could do this.

Leaves painted the parking lot in a yellow brown mush that stuck to his shoes. He wiped his feet on the carpet inside the door, chipping them off, and slipped his hands casual as could be into his pockets. He was to meet the office manager in the lobby but he was some fifteen minutes early and so wasn’t really expecting to be met right away. Instead he meandered his way over to a wall covered by glassy magazine covers, hung with pride. 

“All around me are familiar faces…” Viktor couldn't help but mutter to himself with a faint quirk of his lips. 

They weren’t people he knew or was even acquaintanced with but they were familiar. Their attitudes, their hair, their costumes and their skates, all of it pressed into his brain with a well worn familiarity.

The hockey team was a bit less so but that was neither here nor there, regardless of his intimate knowledge of what exactly kind of gear the players had under their jerseys.

Good times.

It didn’t take long to find Yuuri, despite his only having one picture on this little wall of fame. Strangers to Viktor had their arms looped around him, each gesturing a v for victory at the camera. They looked jovial and there was a bronze laced about Yuuri’s neck. The article it was attached to didn’t talk about a whole lot of much.

Viktor stood back. It was funny - with his hair slicked back he looked like a completely different person. The type that couldn’t fade into the background even if they tried, that was what he seemed. He still tried, in the photograph his posture was small, one of retreat, but without his glasses and his hair to hide his face it became obvious that he was a pretty decent looking guy.

Some Clark Kenting going on there, Viktor reflected, and ignored the pushing insistence in the back of his brain that Yuuri Katsuki wasn’t just decent looking, that he was so much more. His heart was turning traitor before his eyes and it had only been five fucking days.

He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, somewhat plaintive and rather irritated, before masking his expression and turning with the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Mr. Nikiforov?”

“Yes.” Viktor held out his hand to shake the manager’s own. “Thank you again for meeting with me on such short notice.”

“Well how could I not? We want to help as much as we possibly can.”

Judy Wilstershire had very kind dark eyes. Her hair was cropped closely to her head and she was also quite small, her head barely meeting his shoulder. She wore a professional looking blouse and slacks, and her shoes were ever so slightly worn.

“All the same.” Viktor stepped back. “Would you mind showing me around your facilities? I’d like to get started if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, Mr. Nikiforov.”

Probably the most striking thing about her right now was the way she was looking at him as though she knew him. Ms. Wilstershire (at least judging by the lack of a ring on her finger, but that didn’t mean a lot these days admittedly) didn’t bring it up as they toured about the place but it was pretty clear that she recognized him from his previous career. Actually he was somewhat surprised that Cialdini hadn’t seemed to, but then again the other had also been rather distracted by other things at that moment.

I.E., his missing student.

The skate shop was empty and there were only two young men in the gym. No, the majority of the activity was confined to the rinks and, apparently, the snack bar.

“Did you know Mr. Katsuki?” Viktor asked, thumb brushing over the side of his notepad.

“Not especially, no. From what I understand he mostly kept to himself.” Judy shook her head, her hands hanging loose by her sides as they watched the activity on the ice from the bleachers. “Never caused us any trouble though, I’ll tell you that much.”

And that was about the most he managed to glean from her and, sadly, everyone else. Nobody had seen a man creeping about who fit Phichit’s description, or knew anyone who did. That lead felt like it was going cold fast. 

Viktor scrubbed the back of his neck with agitation. The muscle there was tight with his stress and even though it wasn’t even hitting 11 in the a.m. yet he could feel a headache beginning to tingle up the back of his head. 

The short woman was patient at least, giving him her time throughout the unfortunately short interviews he’d conducted with the various athletes about the ice. Together they made their way to her office and Viktor dropped into the seat he was gestured to, flipping through his notes.

“If there’s anything else we can do for you, Mr. Nikiforov....”

“You’re certain you haven’t seen anybody odd loitering around the rink?” He asked, looking up at her.

She just shook her head, spreading her palms in a helpless half shrug. “No I can’t say I have. Nothing beyond the usual kids looking for trouble anyways.”

Viktor hummed softly and looked at the thin paper. His cramped writing glared back at him mockingly.

“You have my number. Please don’t hesitate to call me if you see anything, think of anything. Even the smallest detail could help us.”

“Of course, Mr. Nikiforov. You’ll be the first person to know.”

The thick ash grey clouds felt suffocatingly close when he stepped passed the boundary from warm lobby into the Fall-cold parking lot. Viktor peered upward at them, his gaze searching, his expression pinching with irritation.

There was still the alleyway to run over again. He shook himself from the agitated daze and tugged out his cellphone, making his way over to his car.

“Mila? No I didn’t get anything out of it, nobody knows of anyone matching the kid’s description. Are you finished in the apartment yet? ...Alright, I’m on my way.”

They’d finished their search in the, frankly long, time it had taken Viktor to work his way through the population of the skating club, and had moved their attentions to the apparent crime scene. Again, how much they would actually be able to find Viktor was sceptical of with the only potential piece of evidence from that location being a discarded phone. And depending on the trash pickup schedule of that block, even that paltry item may now be gone from them. Searching the landfills for a single missing phone and earbud set that probably wouldn’t even give them anything was an allocation of funds that he knew for a fact that they wouldn’t be seeing.

He’d be laughed right out of the precinct if he even suggested it, international incident or no.

Viktor wracked his brain as he turned the ignition over, glancing into his drivers side mirror as he pulled into reverse. The skating club worked on a schedule and not everyone who was a member of it would have been present today. Tomorrow he would just need to check again, and this time maybe he’d be able to budget some time to hit up the surrounding businesses, but not today.

When he arrived, the small through road was an even bigger mess than usual. The need for a warrant was unnecessary for going through garbage and so the three people they’d been alloted were free to pack it up and cart it away or rummage through it as they pleased. How they made the distinction between what could prove to be valuable and what was useless to the investigation in this heap, Viktor only had the smallest idea. 

But this is what CSIs were trained for and while Viktor was no slouch in the investigative department, this was their specialty.

“Anything?” He asked Mila as he stepped in close.

The redhead shrugged.

“Not much. Cigarette butt in the seat cushions so it wasn’t totally fruitless. Something for forensics anyway.”

“Anything to identify the brand?” All this talk of cigarettes was making Viktor crave them with all the yearning of a man who had never touched one in his life, but desperately needed something to destress with.

Mila could only shake her head. “I guess? I don’t know much about smokes to be honest. But if the filter is anything to go by, it looked a little short.”

Her jay blue eyes found his, an expression of worry tugging down her slim brows. Viktor returned it, then shut his eyes with a sigh.

They didn’t end up finding anything except for a wealth of crushed and soggy filters, and a light grey windbreaker with a drop of blood on the inside corner. With any luck they would be able to get some DNA evidence off them to place the assailant and Yuuri both at this location, effectively hardpinning it as the crime scene. That could take weeks though, even if they put a rush on it the forensics lab could hardly help how utterly bogged down with work it was.

Plus side though, Viktor found when they arrived back at the station, they finally had a translator for Yuuri’s notebooks.

Apparently, Yuuri Katsuki was something of a celebrity in Japan. _Apparently_ , he was considered the best of the best of the selection of figure skaters Japan had to offer. _Apparently_ , he was due to attend the Rostelcom Cup on the fourth of November. It was presently the seventeenth of October, not that it mattered much. Yuuri would be unable to participate regardless. 

Viktor was well aware of the hype surrounding the younger athlete, his hasty guilt-fueled google spree enlightening him well enough even if he didn’t read a lick of Japanese (thank google translate for that one, even if it was shoddy at best), and was therefore made aware of the absolute furor that had snapped into being over the figure skater’s disappearance.

The newspaper headlines were ugly, screaming it in bold letters as front page news, Yuuri’s grayscale photo dim and unlively. Viktor had been expecting it to leak fairly quickly even though it never failed to piss him off every time. The gruesome murders were fuel for their coffers after all, and the era of newspaper was making a swift death in the face of the internet.

Vultures.

He was also expecting the Japanese Consulate to get involved sooner than later and indeed they’d risen favourably to the occasion. The police chief, a portly and usually jovial if acerbic Native fellow (which with all the institutional racism running about in the system was probably nothing short of a miracle and spoke heavily toward the man’s ambition and determination), mopped his forehead of the nervous sweat that dotted it as he informed Viktor that finding Mr. Katsuki was now his top priority and there was already someone at work transcribing the pile of notebooks and journals which had been pilfered from the boys’ apartment in the name of evidence gathering.

Viktor was pleased, if also somewhat concerned. He was rather fond of Dan and was suddenly quite aware that there were probably a whole handful of bureaucracies pressing down on him right now and that it’d likely be him that would get the boot, not Viktor, if in the end it was a dead body they found. 

What he had not been expecting was Hiroko and Toshiya Katsuki pounding down his metaphorical door.

“I’m so sorry that this has happened,” Viktor said, honestly actually pretty regretful as he set a couple of cheap styrofoam cups in front of them. “But please know we are doing our best to find your son.”

“We are very sorry to come so unexpectedly,” Toshiya spoke in a pretty thick accent but his English was really very good. It made sense given his work. “But when Celestino called us, we-we had to come as soon as we could.”

“I understand.” He dragged a chair closer to the couple and sat. “Rest assured, we will find him.”

Hiroko, Viktor noticed, looked an awful lot like her son. Yuuri had her nose, her eyes and the part of her hair. The influence of Toshiya was largely in the shape of his jaw - well defined and handsome. Yuuri had apparently had the misfortune as well, of having two parents with poor eyesight, so he came by his need for glasses honestly.

The woman blew her nose into a tissue, a box of kleenex at her elbow, and sniffled hard as she accepted the coffee. Toshiya’s arm was wrapped about her shoulders and she was turned slightly into the embrace, one of her warmly tanned hands resting on his knee in mutual comfort.

“Right now we’re looking for witnesses and suspects. Our CSIs have swept the area where we believe the crime took place, as well as the boys’ apartment. We have a very solid set of leads which we’re following right now and forensics has a good deal to work with.”

That was stretching the truth a bit, but that they had more now than they ever had before was solid encouragement. 

Hiroko sipped at the coffee, her eyes cast downward for a moment before raising.

“I’m sorry but what did you say your name was again?”

“My name is Viktor Nikiforov.” He sat back, crossing his legs at the knee and favouring her with a mild smile.

“That name sounds very familiar.” Toshiya wondered aloud while next to him, his wife was suddenly regarding him with wide, startled eyes.

“Don’t you remember, Toshiya?” She asked, looking up at him. “He’s that figure skater Yuuri idolizes.”

Idolizes. Present tense. Viktor’s mind reeled momentarily before he snatched it back and sat on it, forcing himself to be present. 

Still though.

Yuuri hadn’t stopped looking up to him.

There was a brief smattering of Japanese as the couple talked back in forth, shocked and stealing glances toward him before Hiroko smacked her husband’s arm with the back of her hand and took a deep and fortifying breath.

“If Yuuri knew who was looking for him, I’m sure it would give him strength.” Her smile was heartbreaking and tragic, eyes glistening with the threat of tears. “Thank you. Please Mr. Nikiforov, find my son.”

Alright.

No pressure.

That night Viktor stared sleeplessly up at his ceiling, feeling gobsmacked and lost. This investigation was taking more out of him than he’d ever thought a case possibly could. It tore at him daily, nibbling away at his emotional stability.

Beside him, Maccachin gave a soft woof in her sleep, legs kicking in a dream. Viktor glanced down at her, and his lips quirked into a smile as he rolled over to scratch the poodle’s ear.

“Least I have you.”

Though, he realized with guilt, he’d been away from home even more than usual lately. A police detective held odd hours to begin with, and with all the work he’d been wading through the past bit he’d barely had time to eat much less spend time with his dog. Luckily his young cousin Yuri (and wasn’t that a kicker) was always available to dog-sit for a couple of extra twenties but all the same.

He sighed, regret puddling in his chest, and snuggled close. Maccachin didn’t have a lot of time left.

Maybe after this, he should reconsider what he did for a living.

Because, even if he didn’t want to admit it, Viktor was tired. He’d only been at this career for a handful of short years, had rapidly scaled the ranks to become one of the most notable detectives in the Michigan state, but he was tired.

There were too many broken leads and broken bodies piling up behind him. Every wet eye pleading with him for a resolution was another nail in his coffin even with each relieved ‘thank you’ he received. The long sleepless nights that had used to thrill him as he sat up working out the details of case after case, unravelling mysteries and catching criminals, were now wearing him thin.

He was burning out. Three months away from 26 years old and he was burning out.

This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen until he was over the hump of his 30s. Viktor sucked his bottom lip between his teeth in thought, stroking Maccachin’s curls more for his comfort now than her sleepy enjoyment, and closed his eyes.

“You always did call me fickle, mama.” He muttered softly, a joyless smile tugging his mouth crooked. “Guess it’s about time for that to ruin this too, huh…”

It was entirely possible that it was just this case that was pulling him so thin. The emotional investment he’d poured into it over the last three years, and especially in the past few days, was ridiculous. There was no professional barrier holding him apart from this. No it was right in his face, invading his personal space and glaring him in the eye.

“It’s only been five days.” He shook his head.

Oh well. Tomorrow was a new one and he’d treat it as such.

~~~~~

_September 20, 2016_

_A guy approached me today, said he was a dancing coach who really admired my work but that there were a few things I should work on, which he’d be happy to help me with. I said no of course, he didn’t have a card or anything and it kind of felt like someone trying to lure you in because they’d lost their puppy and needed your help. He didn’t really put off any vibes like that and I could actually believe him since he kind of had that look to him, but I don’t know. Gut feeling, and mom’s always taught me to follow my instincts._

_Phichit’s still teasing me about that whole ‘sugar daddy’ thing and honestly where did he even learn that phrase? What kind of people has he been hanging out at school with? Maybe I should pop over during my afternoon break and make sure nothing nefarious is going on over there…_

_But anyway. Guess it kind of figures doesn’t it? That the only people who could be attracted to plain, chubby Yuuri are old men and whackjobs. I’d almost say Phichit is onto something (note to self, never show this to him ever) but just the thought of doing that kind of thing is- No. Nuh uh. Pass. Not for me!_

_He did give me his contact info though, insisted on putting it into my phone ‘just in case I changed my mind’. I was too overwhelmed to like, deny him, it all happened pretty fast and I don’t think I not-stuttered once in that whole conversation. Ciao Ciao, Tokukawa and Minako are all the coaches slash instructors I’ve ever needed but who knows._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor viktor :c tfw ur a genius at everything you do but youre burning out. hopefully when you get yuuri back you'll be able to go on vacation~  
> It's a little unbelievable (to me at least) that he's a detective at the age he is and I was tempted to fiddle with the ages a bit?? But decided meh, this things already au enough lolol Have been debating it since inception but Im glad i finally settled on a decision regarding that.  
> Also, brief glimpse of Yurio in this chapter!! He's probably not going to feature much in this I'll be honest. More likely he'll be bigger in the sequel  
> ;D
> 
> ANYWAYS
> 
> even though it's fillery i HOPE YOU ENJOYED!!!! please stay with me for the next one and thank you for reading!!!


	4. We make the rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI  
> I'M SORRY I GOT THIS OUT SO LATE  
> and also that i haven't really replied to any of you, i'm sorry, you're all absolutely wonderful and i continue to be amazed by you guys! I'm so happy you're all enjoying this so much!!!
> 
> but i haven't been feeling very awesome the past few days quq and then i forgot what I wanted to do with Yuuri this chapter. Figured it out though!  
> Writing this is making my browsing history look very odd indeed. "Jason Statham wash death race" is quite the little word salad.
> 
> BUT ANYWAYS! we're getting somewhere this chapter!!! I hope you all enjoy it!!!
> 
> STILL NOT BETAD OR PROOFREAD ALL THAT HARD

Yuuri came awake with a scream of startled fright, curling in immediately to protect his tenderest parts from a high pressure jet of cold, cold water. He writhed closer to the wall, still more than half asleep and dreadfully confused over what the hell was happening, covering his face against the painful deluge.

As suddenly as it began it was gone. He shivered and blinked hard, bewildered, shakily turned his gaze upward only to get a face full of powder. Yuuri sputtered at the taste of it as he automatically recoiled, sneezed against what had gotten up his nose. He wiped his tongue against his dirty teeth, grimacing at the bitter flavour.

Baking soda?

“Scrub yourself.” Said the gruff voice overhead, and through the glaze in his brain he could hear his captor sink into the squeaky chair just a short few feet away.

It took Yuuri a moment to fully understand why he was doing what he was doing but his hands had moved automatically to scrub the white powder into his dripping skin. When he fully processed that he was being given an opportunity to wash himself he committed to it eagerly.

Admittedly he had not known that baking soda could be used for this but he supposed, as he shrugged out of the thin flesh toned straps to peel the leotard down his chest, that it made sense.

At least he hadn’t been drenched in borax.

He rubbed and scraped at himself roughly, eager to be rid of the dirt and smell that had clung to him for what felt like forever now, practically tore the water soda mix into his hair. He stole glances toward the figure in the dark, lips pulled into a tight line.

Yuuri had grown up in a bath house. He was used to nudity and the concept of bathing with other people was a casual one he often took for granted.  
This, though, was much more vulnerable and significantly more frightening. The brunet didn’t bother with bravado and twisted his front to the wall to build at least an illusion of privacy, safety.

He’d already been stripped by this man.  
Perhaps there wasn’t a point to being shy but that particular indignity still stung at him and Yuuri refused to be completely nude in front of his captor if he had any choice in the matter. He was defenceless and exposed as it was, couldn’t bare the thought of revealing himself openly to this-

He pinned a tired glare toward the smudge of probably-a-person over his shoulder, feeling his ears flush with irritated embarrassment as he gave a cursory scrub between his thighs, down his legs.

He should probably clean...but no, the very thought of digging at his horrifically wounded ankle made nausea curdle in his stomach.

Yuuri didn’t get much further into that line of thought before the hose was turned on him again with all the power of a pressure washer. His shriek was immediate and he cringed away automatically, his flesh feeling as though he was being burned. The jet of water was turned to his head and he covered it with his hands, gritting his teeth tightly as his fingers rapidly began to sting and numb.

And then it was over and Yuuri was left shivering, red and sore and chilled but ultimately feeling rather a bit cleaner than he had before he’d fallen asleep. He panted raggedly, turning slowly and gathering the leotard straps like they were the last remaining shreds of his dignity, jerking them clumsily up his shoulders. 

The man was close now, the borders of the tentatively expanding pool Yuuri sat in barely touching the toes of his shoes, but still he did nothing.

Yuuri was getting tired of just being stared at.

He was getting tired of the whole event. It had been a short forever now and his mind was begging for a change, sick as it was, in this bizarre game they seemed to be playing. He felt like he was being drilled with suspense, waiting ragingly impatient for the entire thing to come to a head somehow and just end already.

But it didn’t. The man just fucking stared at him endlessly and Yuuri wanted to scream, could feel the noise building in his tired and aching throat.

He was being driven insane.

His jaw trembled and he clamped it still, his glare dimming into something less obviously enraged but still just as cold. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes but he could feel them, directed his icy look toward that direction in the hopes that somehow they made eye contact. For the first time in his life, Yuuri began to feel hate.

They stayed like that, hung suspended in a single nerve wracking moment, for Yuuri did not know how long before the man finally stepped back and turned toward his chair again.

His captor took a seat, dropped the hose. By the noise it seemed like he was shuffling for something before the flick of a lighter glowed through the dark. The familiar scent of cigarette smoke wafted through the air that otherwise tasted of must and damp. 

Yuuri knew what that meant. He began to haul himself upward, clawing deep into the wall and grasping one of the chains which hung overhead for apparently just this purpose. He hung onto it until the spinning in his head and the trembling in his legs had eased then gingerly released his fingers. They ached somewhat from the tightness of his grip, but that was nothing.

It was nothing. It was nothing at all.

He panted, his dripping figure shivering from cold, his toe shoes still in the thin mud, and waited. No point in warming up or stretching his bruised and messy limbs, no point in limbering up. There was never enough time.

The man breathed in deeply and when he exhaled, the sound seemed to shake.

“Dance for me.” The gruff voice seemed to shake as much as Yuuri's body was. “Please.”

Somehow, dragging his body into starting position was always the most difficult. Yuuri was given no routine, he was never asked to dance any one thing in particular and he was never given any music.

No, there was only one demand that was ever made of him.  
He should have bluffed his way out of it, when he’d woken up in toe shoes instead of regular flats. It would have been easy. Men didn’t do pointe work after all. Yuuri had only learned because-

But he hadn’t wanted to risk it.

Sweat beaded his brow, lightning cracking up his leg and spine as he rode his feet up into the support of the toe box. Yuuri wobbled, vision briefly swimming before he caught his lip in his teeth and painstakingly forced his body into the familiar dance. 

The fairy of generosity would have probably laughed at him until she was in fits were she an actual being and not just a briefly appearing figment in a story. And Minako, she would have been so disappointed in him to see him butcher this beautiful choreography, so hurt and devastated because-

There was no joy in his expression, Yuuri knew. No point in hiding the strain, no point in stifling his moans of pain. His body quivered like he was convulsing, the muscles in his thighs, core, arms twitching and jumping. Only the pure strength of his will, a determination Yuuri had never before known he was capable of, prevented him from collapsing, or screaming, with each touchdown of his ruined foot.

He had to do this. There was no failing to be had here.

Yuuri would just have to spread his breadcrumbs until his legs went out beneath him.

~~~~~

Viktor wanted to scream.

Beside him, Mila only sighed. “And this is an accurate translation, huh?”

The translator from the Consulate looked somewhat offended for a second before the expression was hidden away behind a look of professional disdain. She bobbed her head once in a nod, sleek black ponytail swinging, and folded her arms across her slim chest.

“As accurate as you can be translating any language to another, yes.” The woman, a Miss Devry, cocked her head. “There’s still lots to be done but I did manage to get this for you at least. It took me all night.”

The dig wasn’t all that subtle.

Viktor let his forehead crash into his desk, tearing his hands through his hair in pure frustration. Of course it was the one piece of evidence that was not only going to be impossible to find, but likely couldn’t even give them anything. They would have to be hellaciously lucky for their techs to retrieve anything from the waterlogged mobile. One night in heavy rain was bad enough but six days exposed to the elements? Five of which were in a landfill? Viktor was not especially tech savvy but he knew that he wouldn’t risk leaving his iPhone out in that kind of grog.

And that was supposing that the garbage trucks crushing mechanism had somehow avoided that tiny, single phone. 

He lifted his head slightly, and happily knocked it back down.

Today was supposed to have been a new start, a fresh attitude. Viktor banged his head again, and again, ignoring the stares he could feel buzzing against his scalp, then pushed himself up and wiped his hair away from his forehead with a blinding smile.

“Well! Thank you very much for your hard work Miss Devry, please tell us when you find anything else.”

The translator nodded and whirled around with a sniff, making her way a little too eagerly to the tiny office space that had been cleared for her explicit use.

“Judging by the location, that would be Southfield West Management wouldn’t it? Why don’t you give them a call Mila, while I go have a talk with Dan.” His voice was impeccably cheerful.

Mila didn’t buy it of course, but she looked just as frustrated as he felt so he didn’t particularly care. Her hair wasn’t looking very chipper today either, its shiny mass tucked away into a short bun instead of being left loose to hang. Knowing how prideful of her hair Mila typically was, Viktor gladly comforted himself in the knowledge that he wasn’t the only one being driven exponentially crazier by the day.

The pressure on them right now was just insane.

“Good luck.” She called as he stood.

Viktor nodded, absently straightening his collar and pressing down the wrinkles in his dress shirt. On a closer to normal day, he mused as he wandered over to the door in question, this was a walk that felt like going to the principal’s office.  
Right now it kind of felt like he was ambling right into his coffin.

Viktor sardonically hoped that it would be a comfortable one.

He knocked, two sharp raps of his knuckles against the glass, and opened the door. Dan waved him in and pointed to a chair, his other hand clutching a phone that he was speaking into sharply, and Viktor sat while politely pretending that he wasn’t eavesdropping. Folding his legs at the knee and resting his hands atop them he peered about, taking in the old details of the police chief’s office with an eye made blind by familiarity.

As far as offices went it was a plain and busy one. Taupe walls, taupe furniture, taupe blinds, a hinting of dust scenting the air. It was cluttered and lived in, carefully piled into neatness in Dan’s own particular fashion, which was to say it didn’t look organized at all. In frames at the man’s back were diplomas and certifications, boasting or reminding that the chief was plenty enough for this job. 

The dark haired man had wrangled Detroit into his grip within his first few months there, long before detective work was even the beginning of a semblance of a thought in Viktor’s head, but outside people often liked to shove their weight about like they were something.

Like right now it seemed.

The phone call ended and Viktor continued to wait as his chief grumbled and swore beneath his breath before fixing the detective with a brown-eyed glare.

“What do you want?”

“Y-Katsuki,” Viktor barely caught himself. “Part of his diary has been translated and a recent entry said a strange man forcefully programmed his number into Katsuki’s phone. I need to find it.”

“Do you now.” Dan sat back, rubbed the bridge of his nose then folded his hands over his stomach and regarding Viktor with a look dryer than any vermouth. “The phone that’s since gone to the dump? The water damaged one, wouldn’t even turn on? That’s the one you need to find?”

“Yes sir.”

“And I bet you’re going to want a CSI team at least four strong aren’t you?”

“If you could manage it, sir, I’d appreciate it.”

“Any clue on how long this is going to take them?”

Viktor candidly shrugged, crossed his legs the other way. “I couldn’t say.”

“You’re killing me, Nikiforov.”

The platinum haired detective winced a bit, gave the older man a chagrined smile. Dan glared at him for a long minute and Viktor could almost hear the man’s brain collapsing under the strain of torn priorities.

On one hand the chances of success were almost nil, leading to their potentially wasting a significant portion of resources and incredibly valuable time. Finding the little iPhone would be next to impossible, and getting info out of it, a miracle.  
On the other, if it got out that there was a piece of incredibly vital evidence which could lead them straight to the murderer who had been torturing Detroit’s performing arts scene for three long years, and who was presently risking an international incident due to Yuuri’s not so insignificant quasi-celebrity status...

Well. To put it simply, Viktor knew precisely where his opinion laid in the matter. Judging by the increasing look of wryness infusing Dan’s features, the chief was in agreement.

A sigh punched through Dan’s teeth and he gave his forehead another consoling rub. There was an open bottle of Tylenol half hidden behind a pile of folders.

“You’ll have your team by three this afternoon, that’s the quickest I can get them to you. Now get the hell out of my office.”

A weight rolled off his shoulders, pushed by something that felt like relief, and Viktor nodded as he stood with a quick ‘Yes sir, thank you sir”, hastily making his way out of the office and nearly running headlong into someone else who looked as excited to be there as he was. 

“Tag,” Viktor patted their shoulder with a grin and the man laughed, just a little bit helplessly, gave his hand a wave.  
“Looks like I’m it.” 

The door shut.

That night Viktor reacquaintanced himself with his frustration as well as two of his long time friends; Alcohol and Christophe Giacometti.

“I feel like I’m being driven mad.” Viktor confides into the brim of his glass before he shoots the liquor back.

The tumbler hits the counter perhaps a little too loudly but he’s too busy running his hands over his face to notice. Sat on the island in the middle of Chris’s kitchen, his shoes off and his top three buttons undone, Viktor feels more himself than he has in the past week.

“And I’m mad because I feel like I’m being driven mad.” The detective continued and watched as the two-tone haired man obligingly poured him another half shot of straight vodka.

Raspberry flavoured Smirnoff still tasted like nail polish remover.

“It’s my job to help and save people and here I am, languishing because this investigation is proving to be difficult. Even though we have more leads than we’ve ever had, it feels like everything’s just,” He gestures, his fuzzy brain searching out an English equivalent. 

“It feels like things are going to end very soon, and if I don’t get this right it’ll end badly.”

Beside him, Christophe smells like cigarette smoke and expensive aftershave. 

His eyes are ceaselessly open, brutally honest and he walks with all the swagger that only a gay man who was forcibly outed when he was fifteen and lived to see the other side, and in fact thrived, could.  
He’s been Viktor’s best friend since he’d moved to Detroit, a lost teenager with a lost career and a lost motherland that had been forsaken for a ‘change of scenery’, still reeling from the injury that had changed his entire life. 

Chris slid onto the island next to him, his expression properly sympathetic. His glasses, a fashionable pair of rounds, catch the dim light and gleam in a manner that throws Viktor headlong into the main dilemma of this situation.

Viktor has always fallen hard and fast.

But Chris has green eyes, not brown, and his glasses have slim black frames instead of chunky blue. 

“And in the meantime,” Viktor bitterly continued, picking up the shot glass and frowning down at it. “Some kid’s being tortured and prepped to die. A kid that I’m supposed to be helping.”

“That does sound like a painful situation.” Chris agrees neutrally.

Viktor tossed back the vodka and set the tiny glass back onto the counter. This time, Chris doesn’t refill it.

“But it’s nothing you haven’t dealt with before. I’ve seen you stressed over your work, and I’ve seen you angry over it but you seem to be taking this...rather a little more personally than usual, don’t you think?”

The detective allowed himself a minute to wallow in silence, pondering his kneecaps and the heat the body next to him puts off. His mind feels dizzy, like he’s caught in a tilt-a-whirl of autographs, sweet smiles and thick black hair.

Black hair clutching greasily to a dirt smudged forehead, just visible behind an equally dirty, pale white palm.

Viktor blew out a sigh and unbuttoned his cuffs, rolling up his sleeves for something to do.

“He has a poster of me, Chris.”

“...Ah…”

“It’s autographed. I must have met him once, for it to be. He would have been so small and I can’t remember.” Viktor shakes his head. “And his parents, they’re in town now, hey? They said he still looks up to me. Can you blame me for being a bit more invested than usual?”

This investigation has been hell. Even before Yuuri Katsuki happened it had been eating away at him, his pride as a detective continuously challenged, mocked and scorned with each new dead body.

Every person that had been found thrown carelessly into a dumpster, their heads busted open like twisted, moldering jack-o-lanterns, was a personal failure. Viktor and his inability were the reason they had been killed.

This was not a healthy way to think, and he knew it. He didn’t usually allow himself to fall into this sort of unhelpful perspective because if he did then it really would eat him alive.

But this was not a usual case. It never had been.

“That’s between you, me and the fence post though, got it?” Viktor rolled his head to peer over at his friend, his expression sour. “Tell anyone that I’m leaking details like this to you and I’m a dead man. Well. A fired and disgraced one at least.”

Chris crossed himself and held up an appeasing hand with a mild, playful grin. “I wouldn’t dream of telling a soul!”

His eyes tell Viktor there are things unsaid. Chris thinks Viktor should dump the case onto somebody else, echoing Mila’s concerns in mute uniformity.

“Good.” Viktor nodded, leaned over his knees and rubbed his aching eyes.

He kind of agrees.

From the living room window he could see the glittering of bright orange city lights. Detroit was never completely dark. Somebody out there had to know something.

Yuuri wasn’t dead yet and they were only at the end of week one. Viktor still had time.

“Enough of your bitching,” Chris slid off the counter and headed over to the couch, the open concept floorplan making the transition simple. “It’s my turn. Have I gotten around to telling you about this one bitch at my pole dancing class? Cannot believe she even tried to step up to me.”

“Oho?” Viktor followed, loosely gripping the bottle of vodka, and settled into the chair that was pretty effectively his own by now. “No you did not! But please do.”

The night flashes by in a sequence of witty rhetoric, booze, bright flashes of white, white teeth and laughter. By the time Viktor is asleep next to his best friend at the woozy hour of 2 a.m., he doesn’t have to force it anymore.

Chris would have made an excellent lover. Falling in love with him, Viktor thinks not for the first time, should have been easy.

Morning dawned with actual sunshine for once. Viktor was shaken awake by the insistent buzzing of his phone’s alarm, and a pulsing in his head that wasn’t as horrible as it could have been. It was five thirty in the morning, giving him enough time to get dressed, get home and cuddle Makkachin for an hour while watching cartoons before he had to get to work.

Chris, the rich asshole, was still asleep and would probably remain that way until the afternoon because he only worked when he wanted to and for the past four months, he hadn’t wanted to.

He scribbled out a quick note and left it on the nightstand. His discarded jacket and shoes were gathered up and put on, and his car was, while decidedly out of place in the parking garage filled with shiny money, ready to start and go.

It felt like only the blink of an eye had passed before Viktor found himself shutting the door of his car and peering up at the Detroit Skating Club yet again. Mile swung out of the passenger seat, looking smart and professional in her pantsuit. Her shoes, Viktor was pleased to note, were the slim oxfords he’d bought for her birthday.

He wasn’t Christophe Giacometti rich but he still had enough to throw around every now and again. If he budgeted it carefully that is, and didn’t spree spend it on junk food, booze, books and other miscellany Amazon threw at him. Like the handsome knee length steel grey coat he was wearing.  
And also his shirt. And his shoes.

“Looks big.” Mila noted, like a smartass. “Maybe now that I’m with you this time, you won’t take so long.”

“Shut up Mila.” Viktor muttered in what seemed to be becoming something of a habit. 

The air inside was pleasantly warm and smelled of absolutely nothing. Viktor brushed his shoes absently against the rug and strode for reception before the doors had fully shut, hands tucked casually into his pockets. His notepad was ever present, and almost full he noted as his fingers wrapped around it. He would need to buy a new one soon.

Professionalism drew over him like a well worn jacket and he smiled pleasantly at the woman behind the desk. She immediately flustered. At his side, Viktor could practically feel Mila roll her eyes.

“Hello, is Ms. Wilstershire in? She’s expecting us.”

“Oh, yes of course! Uhm, do you know where her office is? I could show you?”

“That’s fine.” Mila broke in with a smile that was sharper than her mascara coated eyelashes. “We know where it is.”

“Thank you.” Viktor patted the top of the counter with a nod of his head.

“You’re welcome!” The receptionist called after them as they made their way toward the back. He waved obligingly.

Ms. Wilstershire was just as short, and just as forgiving with her time as she’d been two days ago. “You picked a good day, we’ve got our rinks on a rotation so there should be some new people around for you to talk to.”

“You haven’t thought of anything new yourself, have you?” Mila gently pressed. They had shortly greeted each other with a firm handshake and introductions just moments prior and Viktor absently took a mental step back. 

This is why they worked together so well, mutual immigration from Russia aside. Mila had the ability to sweet talk anybody. People automatically seemed to trust her soft, young face and expressive eyes. Her skill with people was intuitive, her ability to empathize mind-bogglingly high. 

(Or it seemed high to Viktor anyway but Yakov had often grunted that he had the emotional depth of a teaspoon.  
Viktor wrote a reminder to himself on a blank page. He should make room somewhere to visit the old man soon, they hadn’t spoken very much at all since he had retired and, teaspoons aside, Viktor was feeling somewhat guilty.)

Where Mila could empathize and talk her way to the bottom of anything though, Viktor could observe and learn. His own ability to truly get to know a suspect, a victim, a person on the street by how they presented themselves, walked, spoke, was what made him one of the best Police Detectives in the state at just twenty five. The sense he gained from people was often what informed his investigations, steered him through the lies and told him whether or not the person in front of him leaned toward innocence or guilt.

Often, very often, his gut was correct. Together, he and Mila were an impenetrable force.

Or Viktor often liked to think so anyway.

Judy accompanied them, she and Mila speaking in low tones while Viktor walked for the most part silently.

He would need to thank Chris for letting him drink the man’s booze whilst having a good bitchfest, as Viktor was actually feeling significantly better. And now that he wasn’t busy multi tasking between stress, interviews and observing, things were popping out at him just a little bit easier.

Like the hunch of one hockey player’s shoulders and his inability to meet their eyes. Distrustful of police combined with a possible anxiety disorder. He had nothing to give them and they didn’t press.

Like the young, young tired eyed figure skater who had scabs on her knuckles. Bulimic. She was sixteen at the oldest, thirteen at the youngest and Viktor’s heart ached for her.

Like the posturing of another young man who seemed to be shifting in just such a way to keep his gym bag out of sight. Drugs. His shoes were expensive, new, shiny Jordans so he either came from money, or he was dealing. Or both.

Unrelated as these issues were he still took note of names, locations, his suspicions and would later pass them on to Judy. What she could actually do with the information, Viktor had no idea, but she had a good heart and it never hurt to try.

It seemed they were getting nowhere fast though, just the same as last time and when they were between athletes Viktor could see his mounting frustration mirrored in Mila’s eyes. This time though, the detective managed to push it out in a soft sigh, lids closing briefly as the last newbie walked away with a nervous backwards glance.

“Well. While we’re here, why don’t we stop by the snack bar.” He suggested to his partner with a smile, looked over to Judy. “It will have coffee, right?”

“It’ll have more than that,” the dark skinned woman chuckled, a hint of New York slipping into her voice. “If you don’t mind a suggestion? Try the cheese fries. I need to go though, I’ve a lot to get done today.”

“Of course!” Mila smiled gratefully. 

“Thank you again for your time, Ms. Wilstershire. The DPD greatly appreciates your cooperation.”

Viktor didn’t know about Mila but greasy, messy cheese fries sounded absolutely perfect right about now. Better still if they came with onions and beef crumbles on top, or some kind of fried chicken. Perfect, sloppy and shameful. His sixteen year old self would have been horrified.

The snack bar apparently had exactly that. Viktor was absolutely delighted.

Mila stared at him with a pretty similar expression to his hypothetical sixteen year old self but Viktor could make out the yearning in the young woman’s eyes. Waistline concerns aside he suddenly knew he’d be sharing.

They’d spoken briefly with the counter attendant before, a young woman with a riotous mane of black curls pulled safely away from her face. She seemed somehow different now, her smile bitten at the edges with nervousness and her eyes flickering behind her toward the kitchen area.

Viktor felt himself begin to perk in fascination, patted Mila’s wrist rapidly. Her hand was stiff. She’d noticed it too.

Ten minutes later they were handed a heaping, steaming styrofoam to-go container piled high with junk food. The woman briefly leaned in.

“Meet me in the parking lot by the dumpsters in five minutes.” She hissed, and Viktor felt his heart skip a beat.

He glanced briefly at her name tag. Aisha.

“Thank you very much! This looks amazing,” He played it off quickly, canting his head in a nod that could have said many, many things to any onlooker and next to him, Mila chirped much the same.

Gathering two forks and walking away, calm as any cucumber, was in fact quite easy even with all the excitement and adrenaline that was suddenly flushing through his system.  
It was easier still when he shoved a forkful of fries in his mouth. The slop tasted delicious.

Outside was a nippy breeze, crisp and chilly. He was briefly tempted to get his car, luxuriate in the heat it would afford him but two people were slightly less inconspicuous loitering by dumpsters than a Ford sedan would have been.  
Slightly. Admittedly not by much.

Mila was a bit too tense to eat, poor girl, but fortunately only a few short minutes passed before an employees only door cracked open and Aisha stepped out, wiping her palms against her apron.

She approached them quickly, hugging herself tightly against the chill, and looked up at them with doe brown eyes that couldn’t seem to quite believe what she was doing.

“The guy you were asking about,” She fidgeted, tapping her toe roughly against the concrete. “Black and grey hair, tall and kinda fat? Limped?”

“Yes.” Mila stepped forward and Viktor fell back automatically to allow her to exude her calm comforting warmth. “You know something?”

“I don’t know, maybe.” The young woman glanced again over her shoulder toward the door and dropped her voice lower. “Look, I, uh, you won’t be telling anyone around here that I told you this right? I won’t be in the news or something?”

Mila gave her head a negative shake, her autumn-leaf hair tousling slightly in the mild wind. “Not at all. Your identity won’t be released to the public by us, we can promise you that.”

The youth seemed to sag slightly, rubbing a hand over the sleek front of her scalp, and exhaled rough.

“Okay. I promise you guys I wasn’t lying to you earlier, I only remembered like, fifteen minutes ago. My friend Amber, she works with me right? But she’s been out sick for the last week with pneumonia...Anyway she has an uncle who picks her up sometimes, drops by the food counter to grab a quick meal and he, well he matches that description.”

Viktor hastened to find somewhere to put his fries, his fork, rapidly finding that he didn’t have nearly enough hands or conveniently nearby surfaces. In the end he dropped it to the ground at his feet, plastic hanging from his teeth as he fought briefly with his pockets to rip out his notepad and pen.  
His fingers might have been shaking a little bit as he flipped straight to the back but he doubted anybody could blame him.

Aisha had graciously paused for him, bless her kind heart.

“His name is Robert White. I have no idea where he lives but Amber said he’s helping to take care of her right now, so…”

Mila encouraged the shorter woman with a soft word and after a moment’s pause, she rattled out her friend’s address with a trembling breath and wet eyes.  
“I don’t want her to hate me. She’s my best friend, we’ve known each other since primary. Do you...she’ll understand right?”

Mila reached forward, clasping a gentle hand over the girl’s shoulder, ducked in further to reassure her in a soft tone. “If she’s half as wonderful and kind as you are, she’ll come to. You’ve done a good thing Aisha, okay? I promise you this is something you can be proud of.”

Viktor stretched his toes in discreet discomfort as the girl sobbed and nodded, quickly brushing away tears as they slipped all too easily down her thin cheeks.

“Okay. Find Yuuri soon, okay? I don’t know him great but he seems like a nice guy, and nobody deserves that.”

“We’ll do our damndest,” Viktor piped up for the first time in the entire conversation, drawing a mildly startled glance. “To do exactly that. Thank you, Aisha, very much.”

The young woman ducked her head with a faint grimace, sucking in a wet breath and giving her head a mild shake. “I gotta get back.”

“Don’t let us keep you.” Mila nodded, gazing after the girl as she ducked back up the steps and into the blue door.

The moment it clicked shut she whirled to face him, her eyes round, excited. She didn’t need to say a word.

Viktor hastily gathered their take out as the redhead surged passed him in a dead run, turned clumsily, stumbled against his bad knee, and booked it after her.The sedan chirped as he fumbled the key fob in one hand to unlock it.

Doors slammed, the fries stashed carefully by Mila’s feet, and Viktor pulled the car into reverse the moment the engine rumbled to life, peeling out of the parking lot with haste.

Detroit traffic forced them into a much more sedate pace then the adrenaline pissing through his veins would have preferred. The steering wheel was downright chilly against his naked palms and first red light they came to, Viktor tugged on his gloves.

Mila, meanwhile, was tapping away at the laptop attached to the passenger side dash. Without their suspects ID they wouldn’t find much.

“Yeah, there’s nothing popping up.” Bringing up a web browser, the woman continued with her admittedly brief search. “He has a facebook page but it’s private, and a twitter that looks pretty inactive. There’s a couple articles though,they seem to talk about his coaching and dance career.”

She swung the screen around so he could see and Viktor glanced briefly over, returned his eyes to the road with a mild grin. “Well, he does look at least forty.”

Smiling from a facebook page was a pale skinned man with neatly groomed facial hair, wrinkled blue eyes, heavy brows and hair that did indeed look to be losing a battle against the silver of age. Viktor would probably put him closer to sixty than Phichit’s estimate, but the boy could be forgiven.

He didn’t look like the kind of guy who revelled in malice and torture but few suspects actually did. The most successful serial killers were the plain and the forgettable, average looking to the point that their unnoticeability often became both a trigger and an advantage.

Then again, Robert White also didn’t look like the type that was able to slip into the background. For all the extra weight he carried he was still a very handsome man and it was little wonder that Phichit and Yuuri had spotted him so easily.

Viktor narrowed his eyes at the road, fingers creaking against the steering wheel, and pulled a careful breath into his lungs. He would remain impartial, he would follow only where the evidence took him, and he would not jump to conclusions. 

That was how innocent men were jailed and guilty men went free. He couldn’t let these rampant running emotions get the better of him. 

It took probably forty minutes of lurching stop-start-stop-start city driving to reach the address, a cloudy grey duplex with a small strip of lawn that seemed to primarily be used for parking, if the truck sitting on it was any indication. His heart gave a small trill of nerves, fluttering rapidly in spite of his calm, steadying breaths. Viktor always felt like this before an arrest, was certain he’d never stop.  
If he ever did, Yakov had told him, that was his sign to retire. There was nothing worse than a cop who couldn’t use their heart alongside their brain, he’d said.

There wasn’t much of a driveway to speak of so Viktor parked along the sidewalk, carefully S-turning his way between a couple of other equally tired looking vehicles until he felt his front tire nudge against the curb.

“You ready?” He asked the woman beside him, pinning her down with his eyes. “Remember, stay calm, don’t let your emotions get away from you. We’re only taking him down to the station for questioning.”

“Unless he runs.” The redhead spoke in a tone that seemed kind of hopeful for exactly that. Viktor thwapped the back of her head.

“We’re going to make sure he doesn’t. Calm and collected, Mila.”

“Shut up old man.” She scowled deeply at him, but nodded as she unbuckled herself all the same.

To be fair to her she hadn’t actually made an arrest since her promotion. Her eagerness was understandable.

“Right.” The detective whispered to himself and pushed open his door, the heels of his sleek shoes clicking against the jagged weed-grown sidewalk. Straightening, shutting the door behind him with a flick of his wrist, Viktor adjusted the lines of his coat and stood tall, beginning his way up the walk. Three short stairs were climbed to a shared balcony, landing him in front of a dim white door.

He rapped his fingers solidly against said door’s window and stood back, Mila at his elbow.  
Robert White’s expression was mild as he opened the door but upon seeing them, he blanched as pale as his surname. Viktor didn’t deny that he felt significant relish as he and his partner revealed their badges with shark sharp smiles.

“Robert White?” Viktor asked, because there was a procedure to this sort of thing. The man nodded. “Would you mind taking a ride down to the station with us? We have some questions we’d like to ask you.”

He watched as the man’s adams apple bobbed nervously, swallowing against nerves. Viktor felt his core tighten, his leg muscles stiffen and though there wasn’t an outward change in his posture he grew ready for a fight.

Luckily there was no need. Robert nodded shakily and slipped into his shoes.

“My sister isn’t home for the moment,” He spoke somewhat roughly, stepping out and locking the door swiftly with shaking hands. “And my niece is very ill. If we could do this quickly I would appreciate it.”

“It’ll go precisely as fast as you let it.” Mila reached out to take his elbow into a stern grip and as one, she and Viktor turned to lead the greying man to the car. He opened the backseat, safely barricaded against any struggling by bars and thick glass.

“Watch your head.” The detective spoke glibly. 

The moment Mr. White was seated he shut the door, perhaps harder than necessary but it was difficult not to, what with the sense of triumph buzzing through his head. One suspect in custody, one step closer to finding Yuuri Katsuki.

Viktor slipped into the driver’s seat and kicked the engine to life, reminding himself again not to read what wasn’t there. Impartial, he reminded himself as he pulled away from the curb, a tense silence filling the atmosphere. He needed to stay impartial.

~~~~~~~  
_  
He’s so very honest._

_My others either kept themselves hidden or were utterly obnoxious. Very few have given me this happy medium of ernest silence._

_He doesn’t bother with speaking you see, he won’t beg for his release or an end to his pain, he doesn’t attempt to draw me into useless small talk. Instead what he needs and what he feels he conveys to me through his eyes as though the looks we share are all the communication necessary between us. I love him for this. This boy understands exactly what I need of him implicitly. I don’t need to guide him by his nose or hold his hand, he simply knows and he gives it to me freely and generously. It’s a wonderful, luxurious feeling that resembles something close to relief. Perhaps after so long I’ve finally found what I needed._

_I am truly, truly excited. He’s simply astonishing. Words cannot describe him, in the end, and I can only feel blessed that I have finally found him._

_Somehow, he reminds me of her. The physical resemblance is paltry at best but his gentle quiescence when I’m not near to him and the expressions he favours me with, something in the tilt of his jaw and neck when he performs for me, those are all her. And that is all I need._

_I wonder if he will be able to do what all the other useless ones could not._

_Do you think he’ll be able to manage it, Mr. Nikiforov?_

_I truly, genuinely, hope he does._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you're just  
> honestly really pretty deluded?
> 
> I think the fact that the only looks Yuuri's been 'favouring' the murderer with have been glares are pretty telling, I mean, just sayin.
> 
> Poll time!! Who do you think the killer is? Poor, poor Georgi is a pretty popular choice. I can't say as I blame him too hard in series, Anya is a Total Babe.
> 
> Getting a bit further into Yuuri as well. Cannot wait to fuck him up further. Bwahaha. #donthateme
> 
> PS I HAVE A TUMBLR THAT IVE BEEN SLAPPING SOME ART ON  
> find me @http://deerwinks.tumblr.com/ (junk blog) or http://twisted-cable-knit.tumblr.com/ (art onlY)
> 
> PPS i keep on forgetting to add! Yuuri's in one of these lil swimsuit lookin things - http://www.bloch.com.au/12482-thickbox_default/l7414m-bloch-brad-mens-leotard.jpg


	5. Our Honeymoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well first things first, i wanna apologize for taking so long to get this out to you guys. For those of you who haven't swung by my tumblr/online journal, I've been feeling excessively terrible. Honestly most of my energy is going towards remembering, and then trying, to eat lately? Because that's a thing that takes effort I guess. #accidentalcrashdiet  
> And combined with hypoglycemia, well. It's been fun?
> 
> Anyways I've been writing this up for a while. I was gonna just dump the entire rest of it when I'd finished but it's getting longer, and taking longer, than I thought it would. That said I've probably got another chapter and a half written but I'm still going to focus on finishing vs posting.
> 
> All that said I hope you enjoy this messy messy mess. It gets #weird.
> 
> NOT BETAD still. Not really proofread either lol

If there was one thing Viktor thought he could be grateful for, it was that at this time of year the dump didn’t smell as gruesome as it could have. He glanced down and absently kicked away the remains of a broken doll head, uneasy under the one eyed plastic stare.

Creepy. He hoped it wasn’t an omen of some sort.

“Do you think you’ll have any luck locating it?” He asked the man who stood beside him, a CSI in a dark blue windbreaker and latex gloves which were planted sturdily on his hips.

The guy was a senior member of the division, with close cropped grey hair, glasses and what seemed to be a permanent frown. His name was George Greer and Viktor wasn’t going to lie, he had respect for the man’s work. And was perhaps also a little intimidated.

But if there was anybody at all who could find the damned cellphone, it was this man and his team.

“It’s difficult to say.” The man replied after a healthy silence, glancing skyward at the deep grey clouds overhead. What had dawned cheerfully in the morning was quite gone by three, and now the drizzle was a constant mist, too thin to be truly called rain but more than enough to plaster hair to scalps and darken jacket shoulders with water.

“We’re giving it the best we got and will continue to do so, Mr. Nikiforov, but right now? Who knows. And given it’s already been a couple days...” Respectful as always, the elder man tugged off his gloves and pulled out a carton of cigarettes, a plain black lighter. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.” Viktor turned his head back to watch the handful of people crawling over and around the heaps.

They almost looked like ants, scuttling around like that. Ants in dark blue jackets.

“So I guess the suspect you apprehended earlier didn’t pan out?” Greer asked, his voice muffled around the smoke dangling between them. 

“Nope.” The detective let the word pop from his lips with a frustrated frown as he thought back to the interview.

They’d reached the station with minimum fuss from Mr. White and had led him into one of the interview rooms. While Mila departed briefly to get the man a cup of Joe, a gesture which would hopefully set the man at ease and get his lips loose, Viktor gestured him into a chair then took a seat himself.

He tugged out his notepad, letting quiet overrule the room as he etched out the date, scribbled down a few hasty notes, and absently began to doodle to make it seem he had more than he actually did.

When Viktor finally gave his attention the suspect, smiling habitually, Robert was bathed in a clammy sweat, his expression beneath the handsome facial hair one of extreme worry. There was certainly a hint of guilt that rounded his shoulders, Viktor thought as he heard the door behind him briefly open and close. And resignation seemed to seep out of his hands, clasped on the table in front of him.  
This was all very good for them, and very unfortunate for Mr. White.

“Here you go.” Mila set the cup in front of their suspect before taking a seat.

“Oh, ah, thank you.” Mr. White didn’t drink it but did clasp his fingers around it. 

Just inside the lip, Viktor could make out the quiver of shaking black coffee.

“Mr. White, do you know why we brought you here today?” Mila asked and leaned forward, her gaze intent.

“Ah...yes, I think so. This is about that young man who’s gone missing, isn’t it?” The drawn looking man appeared to hunch in further for a moment before he blew out a harsh gust of air, fingers beginning to rap against his styrofoam cup.

“It is.” Viktor blinked slowly, his brows drawing down. Something was nagging at him but he let it slide, confident it would come to him eventually.

“...” Robert sat quietly for a moment before shaking his head and shooting back the coffee like he wished it was something a bit stronger. 

“A person matching your description was seen following Mr. Katsuki regularly before his disappearance,” Mila pressed when it was obvious the man wouldn’t come out with anything on his own. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?”

His fingers were clean and unremarkable, rapping against the tabletop now and Robert grimaced at a wall for a long moment before visibly gathering himself and turning toward them. 

“Yes, okay, it was me alright? But I swear to you I have nothing to do with this!”

“We’re not saying you do, Mr. White.” Viktor comforted, the unspoken ‘yet’ lingering on his tongue. 

“Can you explain exactly what you were doing? Had you in fact been following Mr. Katsuki?”

“I-no, well, yes but no, not at first,” There was a deep ruddy flush curling around Mr. White’s ears and shame in his eyes. “I had only happened to bump into him the first few times but, I...I suppose you could say I wanted to get to know him. He’s a nice kid.”

“You felt attraction toward Mr. Katsuki?” Mila’s tone was non judgmental but Viktor’s mind was swinging back and forth between incredulity and whatever it was he couldn’t yet name.

For a young man who seemed so unsure of himself Yuuri did tend to draw in people like flies, didn’t he?  
Sadly it wasn’t working out in his favour this time around.

The man seemed to curl in all at once like a burnt and crispy page corner. 

“Yes. I know I shouldn’t have been following him about but I had been trying to gather the courage, you see, to speak to him. Being my age and approaching a handsome young man, I was frightened. Things...Well, I was concerned my intentions would be misconstrued.”

“We know, Mr. White.” 

It was something about the man’s nails, Viktor was certain. Something about how they looked didn’t fit with the profile of evidence they had built thus far, even if Robert was unwittingly displaying his intelligence with how he spoke. And their killer, as Viktor was well acquainted with, was very intelligent. 

“We’re not judging you,” Viktor’s voice was gentle even if his smile was sharp edged. “We just want to know what happened.”

“Well, nothing! Nothing happened, nothing at all!” The older man blustered, looking worried and upset. “I-His younger brother maybe? His friend, the dark skinned one, I don’t know but he pointed me out and I-After that I simply couldn’t. I was too afraid and...too ashamed.”

Robert White was a man who’d been brought up to fear and despise his sexuality. There was a pale line on his ring finger, the gradient only slightly lighter than the surrounding flesh and Viktor could only guess that the man’s attempts to claim a happy heterosexual marriage had fallen through.

“I didn’t want to seem like I was stalking him, I didn’t want to frighten him! He and my niece are on good speaking terms, I didn’t want to upset her either but, no, I didn’t want to frighten him. So I stopped.” Mr. White elaborated, scrubbing a fitful hand through his hair. “God...when I heard he’d gone missing I knew you’d be knocking on my door soon enough. That poor man...But please, you have to believe me.”  
He looked at them with watery blue eyes that pleaded for understanding and plaintively spread hands. “I swear to you, I didn’t do it. I’ve never been within ten feet of the boy, you have to understand!”

It hit Viktor in that moment, the flash of White’s fittingly pale teeth sparking what had been pressing at him.

Robert White didn’t smoke. He didn’t smell of it, his nails and teeth had not yellowed from it. 

He didn’t fucking smoke.

Viktor latched tightly onto the irritation that electrified his veins, shoved it back and gave Mila a sideways significant look. The redhead caught it easily and blinked at him with mild, professionally hidden surprise.  
They were done here. 

They tossed a few more questions Mr. White’s way but the ignition beneath their blaze of excitement had been extinguished, and so it didn’t last very long after that.  
Did he see anyone else strange around Mr. Katsuki, was there anything he could think of that seemed significant, had he seen or heard anything, anything at all.  
No, not really.

Fifteen minutes later maybe they led him back out, the wet cold of the outside a shock after enjoying the warmth of the station.

“Don’t leave town.” Viktor smiled, gave the man’s shoulder a firm pat. “We may need to follow up with you.”

“I won’t.” Robert looked relieved and apprehensive at the same time, the weight of the events pulling his otherwise ramrod posture into a rigid slouch. He turned to leave and behind his back, Viktor whispered rapidly to his partner and nodded White’s way.

The man in question was halfway down the steps before Mila called out to him, making him turn around. “I hate to ask,” She said with a winning smile that screamed sheepish youth and beauty. “But you wouldn’t happen to have a cig on you I could bum, do you? I’m all out.”

Mr. White blinked, his tired features showing a kind of exhausted surprise, and shook his head. 

“No, I’m sorry but I don’t smoke.”

They could hold him on suspicion for twenty four hours, Viktor knew as he watched the distinguished looking man turn away and carefully limp his way down the steps, feeling as if their successful closure of this investigation was getting farther and farther away with every damn step. 

They could hold him for twenty four hours but there would be no point so Viktor made no move whatsoever to follow. 

They’d been effectively stonewalled.

Viktor blinked back to the present and carefully eased his mouth out of an irritated frown, looking over at the CSI next to him with his smile firmly back in place.

Greer dropped his spent cigarette, crushing the still burning filter under his heel. The spectacled man’s face was a show of tepid sympathy.

“That’s unfortunate.” The CSI said. “You’re sure he doesn’t do something to get rid of the staining? There are plenty of home remedies for that sort of thing, my wife’s always cooking up something new to avoid it.”

Viktor shrugged and shook his head. “Positive. Of course there’s the possibility he was lying to us but I know he wasn’t. How long do you think you can go without lighting one up, Greer?”

“Hm. I’ve never really thought about it, a couple hours maybe?”

“His niece has pneumonia. Even if he snuck out of the house to do it, which he would need to, the smell would linger and given he’s helping care for her in very close conditions, he just wouldn’t be allowed to. Not if there’s a chance of accidentally aggravating her condition. He doesn’t smoke.”

There were so many ifs, so many buts, so many possibilities that could all point to White as the killer but Viktor knew from his teeth to his toes that the guy wasn’t their man, and pursuing him would be a pointless endeavor that would only succeed in wasting their time.

“Fair enough.”

“Yeah.” Viktor’s lips twisted into something that was too bitter to be a smile. “Fair enough.”

“By the way, the brand you’re looking for are Basics.” The stone cold man mentioned after at least ten minutes of quietly watching his men and women work. “Pretty low cost. They’re distinctive though, the filter is short and the name is written on it.”

“Thanks.” Viktor absently wrote the name on his wrist, neglecting to pull out his trusty notebook for no particular reason. Basics. It seemed familiar somehow but Viktor couldn’t place it.

His attention was pulled back as a call rang out through the depressing, misty drizzle. A young man was slip sliding carefully down a heap of trash, waving his hand about excitedly, and Viktor felt his heart skip a beat. Cucumber cool, Greer cocked his head.

“Looks like we got something for you.” He said with a hint of what might’ve been a smile if a person was feeling generous, and strode forward with all the ease of a man who cared not a whit about anything much. 

Viktor’s legs moved a bit more hurriedly though, meeting the young CSI halfway. Breathless, the CSI held up a baggy and, within it, a dirty iPhone with a light blue, poodle printed case.

“This the one?” The kid, who was probably older than Viktor and so was certainly not a kid, asked with an excited grin.

Viktor dug out his notebook, flipping through it rapidly to remind himself exactly how Cialdini had described it to Mila. 

He already knew though. Yuuri Katsuki was painted in hues of blue and a love for poodles.  
The phone could belong to no other. 

“That’s the one.” Viktor grinned widely as he took the baggy. 

The screen was cracked and the top left corner was somewhat dented. It was also covered in wet, dirt, and probably things Viktor didn’t really feel like thinking about. Now, it seemed, it was time to hope and pray they would be able to get something out of it.

“Alright, search over!” Greer called to the three others he had brought to scour the heaps and heaps of mouldering, stinking garbage. “Back to the lab, come on.”

As the small team of four headed back to their state issued vehicle, Viktor rolled up his sleeve and glanced absently at his watch. It was nine in the p.m., and while there was certainly more work he could find for himself there genuinely wasn’t much he could do until Yuuri’s phone had been cracked open like the sweetest of walnuts. Besides, it was late and he was tired, physically and mentally, stamina leached out of him by two days of confusion and frustration.

The rest of his cases had either been transferred to other detectives with the switch of priorities, or were likewise waiting on similar things; DNA test results being predominant among said ‘things’. Big part of this work, the waiting game. Viktor always sucked at being patient.

He tugged out his cell, thumbing the screen lock open and quickly bringing up his messages. Viktor spent a moment under the slim cover of the gate’s booth, not moving as he shot a quick text to his adorable baby cousin to pretty please check on Makkachin and he should be home soon. Sending that off, the detective finally turned to exit the gates and made his way for his car.

Another glance toward the time and Viktor pursed his lips in thought before smiling and bringing up his contact list. Scrolling through it while he unlocked his car, the platinum haired man slipped inside and pushed the keys into the ignition, but not starting it quite yet as a dial tone played in his ear. 

He got about three rings in before the call was picked up.  
“What do you want?” Was the immediate and very gruff response.

Viktor couldn’t help but grin wider with delight, starting his Ford and easing carefully out of the parking spot. “Yakov, privyet! How are you doing you sour old man, are you up to company at the moment? I’ve been meaning to get a hold of you for a time now but you know me, always forgetting things!”

A deep sigh gusted over the phone and Viktor restrained a chortle. Winding the older man up was always so easy to do, and so much fun to boot.

“Yes, I do Vitya. I hope you’re not expecting food.”

“Never!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

There’s a strange flavour to the meal he’s given after his latest 'performance', and the texture is gritty. 

Yuuri is at once so exhausted and desperate for nutrition that he doesn’t give it any thought, noting instead with a hazy, distant sort of excitement that the soup is a different brew altogether now, a legitimate almost stew instead of a thin broth.

It almost felt like a reward and when he’s emptied the bowl he cleans it out further, digging his shivering fingers into the sides and wiping out anything that remains. He sucks it from his dirty fingers with desperation, a fervor he doesn’t think he’s ever felt in his life.

Yuuri hadn’t realized how absolutely starved he’d been feeling and the acute, eye itching disappointment he feels when the bowl is completely cleaned out is only further testimony. His ribs feel tight and he scrapes the cheap plastic with his nails in a last attempt to find anything else that he’d missed.

There’s nothing. 

The man steps forward to reclaim the bowl, prying it from Yuuri’s shivering hands with a weird sort of tenderness.  
He swears he feels the touch linger against his knuckles before there are footsteps and the man is walking away, away to wherever he goes when he’s not determined to actively fuck with him. Distantly he hears the soft grunt of wood on wood and a rough clatter. Yuuri blinks muzzily in the direction of the noise for a moment before dropping his exhausted and pained body to the floor.  
.  
The warmth of the hot food in his belly does arouse a bit of comfort though. Yuuri is too spent to actively curl into it but he savours it all the same, the heat a pleasant ward against the chill prickling at his soaking self.  


There is a distant pleasantness that comes with having a full stomach for once and Yuuri only hopes he can manage to keep it down. There’s no nausea bubbling at the back of his throat though, no he just feels sated and sleepy so he guesses he’s probably good.

His eyelids are dragging down by inches, gradually growing heavier until they may as well be made of cement. He remembers this feeling, he thinks. It’s slower to come on this time around, the gradual falling away picking at him over a small forever. Yuuri struggles against it for all of a thought’s worth when he realizes what’s been done to him before giving up.  


There’s not much of a point after all, is there.

When he wakes up it’s the painful sort of muddy languish that leaves limbs nothing but numb weights and his brain a wisp of smoke, slipping constantly away from his grasp.

Yuuri utters a soft groan from where he lays, face down on his side. His hand feels like it weighs twenty, thirty pounds when he picks it up to drag it down the grain of his face and when he does, it doesn’t even feel like his flesh that he touches. He lets it drop, malcontent to do nothing but wait for this to lift and fade but there’s little else he can do, so he settles in.

By the time his brain crawls back into the vacancy that was his skull, Yuuri is certain of what’s happened.

The fucker had drugged him.

Instability rocks through him, tossing the mild sense of security he’d managed to foster straight out the window and into rush hour traffic. It shakes him to the core and his lips pull back in a grimace, tight against his teeth. Of course he couldn’t trust anything the man gave him, he’d realized that somewhere on an intellectual level but to have it thrown into his face so blatantly was a shock. Yuuri is bitter, more bitter than the blackest of teas, when he realizes he has no choice but to take it.

What’s he going to do? Starve himself? It would expedite things sure, but not exactly in the direction Yuuri wanted things to go. Besides, he needed every calorie he could find. 

The lack, combined with the strain he’d been putting his body through, has him dizzy at best and deeper in pain at the worst. He’s practically itching at the gums with hunger, so much so that the dirt he gets to sleep in actually looks appetizing.

It hurts to lift his arm. It hurts to move his legs. Everything just hurts. Yuuri shifts an inch and feels the ache seep in deep, right down to the marrow in his bones it feels.

And how long had he been out for? The thought suckerpunches him. Yuuri growled, muffled, into the chilled flesh of his arm.

The dancer didn’t know. He didn’t. There was no way to tell. It could have been hours or it could have been days, his sense of time was lost. 

Just like that, any modicum of control and stability that Yuuri had managed to adapt had been robbed from him. He had nothing, fuck all, zilch, there was nothing left to keep him sane

His fist clenches and he’s crying, again, because of course he is, he cries at everything these days and that’s great, it’s fantastic for his hydration levels. The tears drip hot and thick from his nose and slip between the cracks of his tightly clenched teeth, salting his tongue. 

His jaw burns from the clench but it’s nothing in comparison to the inferno that’s been spat into his skull. Yuuri hits the floor next to his head before he’s even thought about it and then he’s doing it again and again with a thick, wet snarl, unable to contain himself and unwilling to even try. A noise builds in his throat, an enraged and animalistic thing he hadn’t even thought himself capable of making, and when it breaks free it’s loud, crashing off the walls back into his ears. 

It frightens him. He hopes the madman above him can hear it too.

For the first time in his twenty one years, Yuuri thinks he feels hate.

He yells into the floor until his voice cracks and his throat goes raw, rips at his hair, claws at his scalp and pounds at the floor some more with his fist. He’s throwing a magnificent tantrum but he doesn’t care in the least because fuck this, fuck everything, fuck especially the fucker living peacefully over his head while he subjects Yuuri to hell. The mental torment is bending his mind, dredging up ugliness and flipping him so far around he doesn’t even know which way is up, isn’t sure he can even breathe.

What’s worse, the brunet thinks as he sags, overwhelmed by the too much of everything to keep on with his fit, is that he can imagine his freedom from this. He thinks of fresh air, of grass between his naked toes, of the blinding Easter egg blue of a sunny summer sky. Just upstairs and through a door, something that would be so simple if not for the manacles choking his ankles. It’s so close he can almost taste it, and he rages inwardly at himself for previously taking such simple things for granted. So close but so far. The saying hadn't felt real until now, until he'd been locked away into this terrifying dark, powerless. 

And honestly, why had he even been drugged in the first place? What more control did the man keeping him captive need to exert over him? What more, what possibly more, was there left for the man to take from him?

Yuuri settles, flesh prickling sharply from dearth of energy, and pants roughly. He turns his face into his arm, his other hand draping weakly over the back of his head, fingers stroking and playing through his hair in a parody of comfort.

Yuuri had been thinking he’d needed something to break the semi-monotony but he couldn’t say he’d been expecting something like this.

It pissed him off more than anything that his captor could never seem to face him head on. Each show of aggression was weak and passive, completely lame. Yuuri’s never managed inactivity well. He needs to move, he needs to be out and about, he needs to be Doing something always. If he doesn't, if he's still, that's when the depression takes him. This lame shadow play, Yuuri knows, is probably what’s been fucking with his mind the most. 

Logically it didn’t make sense. Yuuri was pretty sure that there were plenty of people in similar situations to his own that would prefer the cheesegrater of drawn out insanity to beatings, pain, rape, whatever. He was lucky he told himself with a sharp tug on his hair and a hard breath. 

Yuuri is lucky, and he’s being driven utterly and completely mad by it.

Eyes pressed shut and his nail scratching a welt into the back of his neck, Yuuri tilts his nose deeper into his arm and breathes in deep in an effort to calm down his emotional upheaval.

Something is odd though. A faintly floral, waxy smell is what he finds under the faint smell of body odor remaining and Yuuri pauses, entirely dumbfounded.

This was new. It was also faintly familiar. He doesn’t know how long he struggles to place the smell but when it hits him he kind of feels like he’s been slapped.

Wax. Yes, that was what this smell was. With narrowed eyes, Yuuri pulls one of his hands inward and up beneath his arm, grimacing in disgust at the gross wetness of the sweat he’s been glazed in since his withdrawals kicked in, and pats about.

There was nothing. Nothing except baby soft and mildly irritated skin.

….Had the man waxed him?

What in the hell kind of new fucked up game were they playing now? Yuuri frowned deeply, more puzzled than he’d like to say, and reached an arm that didn’t want to move down to his leg. His fingers hit his outer thigh, pulled down further to sweep across the back of a calf.

Yep. Yes indeed, he had been entirely stripped, it seemed, of all his body hair.

With a brief flare of horror his hand shot up to his groin, pushing passed the leotard to feel about. Yuuri sagged with a sigh of somewhat hysterical relief at finding his pubic hair intact and really, what kind of bizarre thing to be grateful for was that? It was ridiculous to be relieved by it, this entire thing was ridiculous in general.

He rolled onto his back, the motion laborious, and dragged his torso upright with a creaking grunt and a whine, pushing himself back into a wall and dropping his head against it. He pants, he shivers, he thinks.

Dimly, Yuuri felt that this invasion of his person should probably horrify him more than it was. It was weird and fucked up, he didn’t think he’d ever heard of a killer waxing his victim’s body hair off before and it was just too incongruous for him to figure out. 

Not to say he was a stranger of the procedure. Body hair could snag uncomfortably on certain costume fabrics and more than that he just appreciated the look and feel, the sense of delicacy it gave him. Yuuri took pleasure and shame in enjoying the ‘emasculating’ act, and carefully never mentioned to anybody that frankly a lot of the time he just didn’t feel masculine to begin with.

Nobody except Minako that was, who'd figured it out on her ownand promptly enabled him with all the love and care of a strange aunt. She practically was one though, wasn’t she? He’d known her since he was small, grown up under her tutelage because she and his mother had hit it off so well when Minako had taught Hiroko ballet in the way back when, had became fantastic friends. Beyond that, Hasetsu was just a small place, the kind of sleepy town where everyone knew everyone. It was nothing like Detroit. He wanted to go home.

The brunet swallowed back the lump in his throat and very carefully steered his thoughts in another direction.

Regardless. He should be horrified, maybe even terrified that his captor had intruded into his personal space in such a frightfully intimate and strange manner. More than undressing and redressing him, this was customizing Yuuri’s very body to suit to the strangers whims.

He didn’t know. He didn't know what to feel and he didn't know what to think. Maybe the horror would sneak up on him sometime but Yuuri frankly didn’t care all that much. What he _was_ feeling, apart from the bizarre sense of sideways departure he’d been given since the beginnings of this mess, was mostly within the realm of puzzled incredulity. It was just too weird. 

Actually, he thought with a weak snort, it was so weird it was almost funny and all at once it struck him how ridiculous this entire situation was. The stranger had chained him down in some dusty cellar or something for...what? A dance and the opportunity to shave a guy’s legs?

Yuuri chuckled without thinking, jumped when the noise rattled in his ears, paused, and then it was as if a dam had burst and he was laughing, chortling into his hands until his stomach hurt and he couldn’t breathe. He laughed until he was crying yet again, laughed until he was so out of air that he couldn't even vocalize it and after that he continued to convulse in mirth.  
Eventually his wheezy twitching tapered into shaky breathing and weak snickers.

“Holy shit,” Yuuri breathed, a bit alarmed at himself but mostly reveling in the faint light that had sparked in him, a genuine brightening of his mood, because he understood just a bit more now how disgustingly pathetic the man who’d kidnapped him was. 

Whoever he was, he was a coward and a creep. Whatever issues the stranger was working through, they certainly didn’t warrant this dramatic bullshit. The terror Yuuri had been feeling over his own helplessness and the power his captor wielded had faded into a complete lack of respect and he absently wondered what the man might think if he knew.

The insight was a powerful one, heady like a sweetly musky aftershave, and he felt almost hyper with it. Yuuri licked his lips.  
They were almost painfully chapped. 

“...I’m going to get out of here.” He whispered and paused, a mild fear of retribution stinging him. Nothing came and he repeated it, louder, needing the vocal affirmation. “I’m definitely, definitely going to get out of here.”

Yuuri leaned deeper into the wall with a soft sigh. The massive fit he’d thrown over being drugged had worn him right back down and the moodswinging and belly cramping laughter he’d just finished had him feeling like he was working on fumes.

Gingerly, he dropped his body to the floor, arms shivering beneath the strain of his own weight, until he was laying down again and pillowing his head carefully on his arms. It was uncomfortable, they were thinner than they'd used to be, but his exhaustion was deeper than his discomfort so it was only a matter of minutes until he’d fallen into a restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hurrah they founded the phone! and now we're going to visit Yakov, who a Lot of you seem to think is the murderer. Y'all in that camp might find this to be a bit of a cliffhanger, sorry. c:
> 
> Yuuri's going around the bend a bit but don't worry, he's saner than he looks here, he's just Really, Really tired. Can't say I blame the fella. Got into some more of his gender identity? I've been trying to allude to it for awhile with the sudden drop offs and his learning to do pointe work so I hope it doesn't seem like it comes out of nowhere! (even if it is kind of in the tags) #genderqueerpride
> 
> It's gonna get pretty intense from here. We have finished our rising action and are hitting the climax folks!
> 
> I hope you continue to enjoy and thank you for being so patient with me quq


	6. Say you want me too

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no yuuri this time folkeroonies so it's a bit short  
> more action next chapter winkwink should be coming up soon, maybe even tonight, we'll see how quick my proofread/edits go
> 
> not betad

The drive over was made brief with the excitement of seeing his former partner again. 

And though they’d joked about it over the phone, Viktor was Very hungry and judging by the bowl of reheated pierogies, sausage and onion he was greeted with, Yakov knew it as well.

“A little taste of the motherland?” Viktor asked, saucy and in a good mood as he flopped into the worn cushions of his former partner’s couch.

The balding man snorted. “As much as you can get out of a bag from Safeway. Eat, eat, before the rumbling of your stomach gives me a headache.”

The detective chuckled, gave his attention to the television as he mindlessly stuffed his mouth with food. He couldn’t quite recall when he’d eaten last today but judging by the instant lightening of tension from his shoulders it had probably been a while. Leaning deeply into the old affair of furniture, he muttered a sigh.

“Thanks Yakov.”

A grunt was all the response he received and Viktor paid it no mind because often, that was just how the balding man communicated. Yakov was a study of contrasting qualities; surly and gentle, proud and humble, unassuming in appearance but overpowering in presence. The old Russian had taken him under his wing when Viktor had joined the force, and it was largely with his aid and encouragement that Viktor had even become a detective in the first place instead of dropping out the moment he grew bored with misdemeanors and assaults. 

Viktor wouldn’t go so far as to say that he viewed the old man as a father figure but a respected elder he cared for? Certainly.

The man’s apartment was not large but it was made somewhat handsome by the exposed brick. The simple cream carpet appeared to be freshly vacuumed and the kitchen, from what he could see through the supporting wall which separated the two rooms, looked as neat and tidy as it ever did.  
It was a pretty general looking middle class home with bookshelves, a painting or two that had probably been purchased at garage sales, a table that looked like it had escaped from the 1960s. The television was still a 90s monolith with a hint of dust covering its wide back and Viktor was temporarily taken to an apartment just as tidy which had also had such a TV.

Hockey was what Yakov was watching, his feet kicked up on the assault on interior design that was his coffee table, a beer can nursed in one hand. Next to him was another table which hosted a lamp and a framed photograph.

“So!” Viktor broke the slim silence the moment he’d finished eating, setting his bowl on the cushion beside him. “Have you been up to very much lately? How’s retirement treating you?”

“I can’t stand it and I’m going insane,” The old man grumbled, his lined face twisting into an expression of somewhat wry disdain. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for kicking me out of my job for a set of pretty eyes. How is Mila by the way?”

“She’s adjusting well, taken to the job better than I was expecting. We work well together.” Viktor smiled toward the hockey game, promptly winced as a penguin was pushed into the boards by a whale. The mild scuffle was quickly broken up and a penalty was called.

The whale man didn’t look particularly impressed to have been benched. His coach didn’t seem pleased either.

“Good to hear you’ve been left in decent hands now that I’m gone.” Yakov snorted dryly, set his can on the slim lamp holding table sat next to his lazyboy. “I was worried you’d end up shot dead within the first week. Sometimes you’re downright incompetent, Vitya. Always forgetting things.”

Viktor whined at the ribbing and kicked off his shoes, drawing his feet onto the cushion and wrapping his arms about his lanky legs. They descended into companionable silence, following the game as it progressed and even though Viktor had barely a clue as to what was going on, he was enjoying himself.

“...Have you visited Lilia at all lately?” The detective asked, glancing to Yakov momentarily to catch the glinting of his wedding ring, resting just above his heart on a slim chain. Almost absently Viktor’s eyes found the small portrait Yakov still kept of the two of them. Lilia’s expression was stern, her vivid green eyes gazing from the glass with barely constrained ferocity. At her side Yakov was just as unsmiling but to the detective’s experienced eye, clearly happy.

The woman looked so young. There was another of her hanging on the wall, a poster in fact, carefully framed and displaying the prima’s delicate strength in moody grayscale. There were a few newspaper clippings tacked up close, yellowed with age, and Viktor didn’t need to read them to know what they said.

“Hm. No, I promised to do so only after I managed to quit smoking, she’d have it no other way.”

“How is that battle going?”

“Hmph. Aggravating.” Yakov nodded toward the ashtray on the table and Viktor followed the gesture, finding only one stubbed out butt crushed in the side. “Almost there but the cravings still get me every now and again and it never fails to piss me off. They almost kicked me out of bridge last night over it.”

The mental image of Yakov being shoved out of the old folk’s center he’d begrudgingly begun to visit had Viktor restraining his mirth behind a soft cough, warranting a glare that said Yakov knew exactly what he was thinking and that it wasn’t funny.

“You’ve been trying to quit for how long now though? Maybe you should try something besides doing it cold turkey.” The platinum blond suggested, eyes straying toward the ashtray with a significant look and a short blink. 

“Nicorette is for the weak.”

“I’ll try to remember to bring you some soon.”

“I appreciate it, Vitya.”

The low light of the single lamp and television danced strange shadows over his senior’s face, plunging Yakov into erratic colours. The rabble from the hockey game grew momentarily louder, the announcers commenting with stunned eagerness as the rink once more devolved into a shoving match. A high stick, whatever that was.

“Is hockey always like this?” Viktor asked with mild amusement, his lids drawing half mast over his eyes. 

“Mn. It was worse in the 80’s. I for one enjoy it.” The old man took an idle sip. “Livens it up rather a bit, don’t you think?”

Viktor hummed, his finger dancing along his bottom lip. The comfortable familiar smell of the old man’s cigarettes still perfumed the furniture, and as the bright, deep blue of the whale’s (Vancouver, according to the announcers and the scorecard across the top of the screen) jerseys melted across his retinas, the detective stole a breath, gave his mind completely over to the present, and relaxed.

Home was cold and dark when he got there but there was a plate of clingwrapped food waiting for him on what thin slip of a counter he had. Viktor read the note from his cousin and smiled. Yurio really was so cute.  
Makkachin tumbled out of her bed and scrambled over to him, her claws clicking rapidly and Viktor laughed as she jumped up on him, eagerly obliging her need for attention by scratching the fur at her neck.

“Who’s my precious little girl,” He cooed, dropping a kiss to the cool black of her nose. The poodle whuffed. “That’s right, you are!”

Except she wasn’t. Little anymore that is. Stowing the leftovers of whatever Yurio had left him in the fridge, Viktor decided not to think about that and distracted himself instead with his nightly ablutions. His shower, while hot enough to turn his chest and knees a bright scarlet, was short, as was the quick scrub over his teeth. Habitually, Viktor picked at his scalp in the mirror, squinting for any signs of his father’s premature baldness.

Was it looking a little thinner? He wasn’t sure. But it was getting onto eleven and he’d been up since five so Viktor pulled away from his reflection, scrubbing at his hair with his favourite towel and ambling naked to his bed.

He shut the blinds against the permanent shine of the Detroit skyline and sank gratefully into quilts and pillows.

Viktor had not indulged himself again in google and youtube binging Yuuri Katsuki but the man still came to him that night. He was wreathed in cyan, turquoise, cerulean, so many shades of blue that it should have stung Viktor’s eyes to look at but it didn’t and even if it had, Viktor wouldn’t have been able to look away.. Elegantly the younger man swung about a sheet of ice that went on for forever, his feet bare, his toes barely touching the ground. The ghostly apparition drew a hand down the slim line of his throat and reached out.

Yuuri’s hand extended toward Viktor and he reached out to take it. He almost caught onto the pretty little bluebird when it all went grey.

When Viktor awoke the next morning to the noise of his phone belting out the cheery vocals of Pharrell Williams, he’d lost the ending of the dream completely, no answers to be found in his ugly, ugly popcorn ceiling. He licks his lips, finding his mouth to be painfully dry, and reached around Makkachin’s still sleeping body to turn off the alarm on his phone.

He thumbs open the lock screen, ambles through his notifications. There are several new likes on his Instagram, cooing over the latest greatest picture of Makka, and he has a small handful of new emails. They’re all junk, subscriptions and advertisements that though he’d signed up for them, he’d never open. 

Not much aside from that though. A text from Mila, confirming that she’d gotten the message he’d left to update her on the happy status of their search. The woman had been ‘busy’ elsewhere. Viktor figured she just hadn’t wanted to hang out at the dump all day.

He couldn’t say he blamed her. It wasn’t as though he’d enjoyed the experience all that much himself.

It still takes him a few minutes to draw his body out of the warm safety that is his pillowtop queen and down comforter, and when his feet meet the floor he shivers. Gathering his housecoat from where he’d dropped it at the foot of his bed, Viktor shrugged it on and in short order, found himself in the kitchen reheating the leftovers Yurio had left him while the coffee maker bubbled to life. Makkachin’s food bowl and water bowl are both refreshed. The dog in question is still snoozing in his bed.

His mind is filled with a blank white noise, only the mildest most nonsensical thoughts making their way through but otherwise giving his brain silence. Hip against the counter, Viktor pondered the cold laminate that was his kitchen floor, sleepiness clinging to him. He’d never been much of a morning person, Viktor reflected as the microwave beeped pleasantly. Especially so if he’d had a late night prior.

The visit with Yakov had been just as necessary as the one he’d had with Christophe earlier in the week. Viktor didn’t normally need to enact such measures to keep himself floating along on top but he wasn’t going to deny himself either. Dragging himself over to his small kitchen table, Viktor turns to give the food Yurio had left him (it’s an omelette, made with mushrooms, steak, cheese and peppers. Yurio is developing into a very good cook) his full attention.

Reheated, it’s still packed with flavour but he can’t enjoy it.  
Instead Viktor finds the white noise of his mind swiftly devolving into snatches of last night’s dream.  
From there a path is found. Is Yuuri still only getting bowls of thin broth? Is he warm at night? Are the withdrawals worsening or gentling? Or, and Viktor grimaces at this possibility, had the already mentally ill young man gone completely around the bend?

It’s all coming to a climax. Viktor’s gut has been whispering this to him ceaselessly over the past few days and nights, adding to his stress. There’s no way to know this for certain but between Yuuri’s doubtlessly painful SSRI withdrawals and the murderer’s rapid obsession, Viktor feels it. 

How long will it take for the murderer to foist his vision of the bride he’s been seeking on Yuuri completely?

As it turns out, not very.

Viktor fussed at the omelette, picking at it more than eating at it, his eyes turning around his home with the empty consideration borne of familiarity. It’s the same as it ever is, mostly neat but showing the signs of neglect in the stains and scuffmarks that mar the floor, in the dust on his television and in the magazine that’s not been moved from his coffee table in over a month.  
Any neatness is borne from emptiness. Viktor wonders about the last time he’d had time to enjoy his home.

He thinks to himself that he needs a vacation just as his eyes arrest themselves at the door.

There is an envelope on the mat, placed against the door in just such a way that it faces him. Viktor feels his spine stiffen in alarm because, for all that his memory is terrible, he knows that it wasn’t there the night before.

Maybe Makkachin had knocked some of his mail off the table when he’d been asleep. The possibility presents itself easily because the poodle is admittedly a bit too large for this apartment, but Viktor still feels a sinking in his gut.

He stands. There’s a lot that goes into being a police officer and a detective, high situational awareness and learning to trust one’s instincts being top of the list. Viktor becomes hyperaware of everything, so the scrape of chair on floor, intrusive and abrupt, immediately pricks at the hairs on his arms and neck.

Viktor is careful and attentive in peering around his home this time, his gaze narrow and his steps measured. The door, and the envelope in front of it, is before him in seconds. The  
plain white of the envelope is familiar.

He’s back again in a couple of short minutes, dressed properly and pulling on a pair of filmy latex gloves. The envelope is snatched off the ground and broken into without ceremony, and Viktor backtracks to his couch.

He pulls out three thin sheets filled edge to edge with the easily recognizable font of a typewriter. A cold sweat breaks out across his forehead.

His phone is in his hand in an instant and as he dials Dan, Viktor takes the opportunity of silence to compose himself.

The killer knew where he lived. 

The killer was escalating.

The killer Knew where he Lived.

Damn if it wasn’t the most unnerved Viktor had felt in ages and when Dan finally picks up, his gruff and irritated voice is frankly a relief.

“The hell do you want?”

“Our perp knows where I live.” Viktor didn’t bother with useless greetings or small talk. “And he’s dropped off a new letter at my apartment.”

There’s quiet and then suddenly quite a lot of cursing but Viktor doesn’t begrudge Dan in the least. Honestly, the man had taken the words right out of his mouth.

Soon enough there’s people heading for him and Viktor ends the call, resettling himself more comfortably on his couch. Makkachin is awake now and she seems to sense how tense he is because she’s keeping her distance, her head cocked, her breakfast untouched.

Viktor shuffles briefly through the pages and finds three, skims it once and then reads it carefully. It’s the same god awful bull that never fails to send a greasy shiver down Viktor’s spine, and the knowledge that the killer had dropped it off at his house only made it all the worse.

Three years. Three years there had been no change in the method, the madness, so why the hell now? Was it because of Yuuri? Viktor honestly doubted it. While the murderer had been uncommonly obsessed with the young man there were other factors in play. It grated him to admit it but Yuuri wasn’t quite that special.

Matter of fact, compared to some of the victims the madman had taken prior, the boy in his bulky glasses and loose fitting dowdy clothes was downright plain. Attractive yes, incredibly, but plain, without presence. Or he was off the ice anyway.

“This isn’t right…” Viktor mumbles under his breath and his eyebrows furrow deeply. “No this isn’t right, it’s too soon.”

It’s way too soon. They’re, what, eight days, nine days into Yuuri’s captivity? It’s not even half how long it takes to get to this point. Never, never had it happened this quickly, those who’d been killed early had never even touched the wedding dress.  
The rantings of madness are as unsettling as ever, pining over the mysterious something or other, the goal, as per the usual but that was probably the only thing normal about this.

“He looks like her, hm.” Considering the line in question with frowning eyes, Viktor wonders if the resemblance is genuine or just more delusion. Were it the former it might be able to bring them closer to their culprit but it was all so uncertain.

He returned his attention to the envelope and sure enough what he’s looking for is there, except it’s in triplicate. Viktor withdrew three grimy polaroids, frown deeper and worry pressing at him hard. It’s almost as if the serial killer is Proud of his work, giving him two extra.

Indeed he might be. Viktor’s mouth is dryer than the slacks he wears as he regards the photos, swallows painfully.

Nothing about this had been the usual, no he’d been thrown off again and again.  
The typical flawlessness the madman displayed was gone, instead leaving behind cell phones and cigarette butts and jackets. The delusions were coming on rapid and hard, the apparent obsession immediate. And now he was dropping off letters at the lead investigator’s home?

Something had happened. Something had triggered this sharp decline toward insanity and it made Viktor breathlessly scared.

The serial killer wanted to end this. His instincts had been right.

The polaroids were as awful as the letter had been. Yuuri was out cold in two of them, sleeping the deep nocturne of the unwillingly drugged, but in the last he was awake, and he was a sight.

If Viktor hadn’t been told the person pictured was Yuuri, he wouldn’t have guessed it. Between the dim lighting and the clothes he’d been forced into, it would have been impossible. Hell, Viktor wouldn’t have even known he was looking at a man.

It made him ill, the extent to which their unknown assailant had transformed Yuuri. In the letter the killer had sounded downright giddy, eager over the prospects of this brand new toy. By contrast, Yuuri looked, understandably, much less impressed.

The wide eyed glare he wore was striking, even half hidden as it was underneath the thick clumps of hair that pooled around his shoulders. They’d been glued in, Viktor knew from the previous male victims, and the effect was at once haggard and messy. Their killer was by no means a salon expert and Yuuri’s hair had been so short to begin with, no doubt making the process more difficult.

And then there was the wedding dress.

It wasn’t very white anymore. Had Viktor not seen the stages the clothing had been through he wouldn’t have even be able to be certain of its original colour. It was thoroughly, utterly, completely wrecked.

Their killer was right though. It fit Yuuri’s very male body surprisingly well, likely due in part to being starved, while the corseted top which caved in his ribs and cinched him into a feminine shape did the rest.

It had probably been beautiful once, Viktor reflected sadly.  
Off the shoulder lace, more lace in the bodice, a full skirt and a plunging neckline, all of it had been caked in so much blood and dirt. Dozens of men and women had died wearing that very dress and it showed painfully between the rusty stains and tears. Viktor rubbed at his chest in sympathy. The neckline was the worst of it.

The victims had always had their heads beaten in after all.

Viktor found his eyes drawn back to Yuuri’s face, so close to the camera, noting the application of makeup but more taken by the expression that came through clearly. There was a muddle of emotions there; anger, disgust, loss, all of it forming a wide eyed glare that spat at the viewer. His eyes almost looked red. Yuuri was blessed with irises that changed gradient depending on lighting, it seemed, and it only served to intensify the weight of his anger. 

There was something else going on in Yuuri’s mind that Viktor had yet to see.

A loud knock broke him from his reverie and Makkachin barked immediately, startled and on edge. Viktor yelled for them to come in and was completely unsurprised to see Mila, equally unsurprised to see the pair of officers which had evidently followed her.

“Dan says you’re going to be staying at a hotel for a bit.” Mila peered about with a hint of curiosity. She hadn’t been in his apartment before. “On the stations dime though, so it probably won’t be the ritz.”

“Goody.” Viktor mumbled. Lots of cockroaches in his near future.

“He’s escalating.” Not bothering to bitch about the circumstances, Viktor instead showed his partner the letter. “Like, ridiculously so. We need to find this kid soon or he’s going to be dead within the next few days. If that.”

“Shit.” Mila grimaced darkly as she flipped through the pages, eyes flickering over it. “What the hell happened? This is just insane, in the three years he’s been at it he’s never been so - deranged and sloppy!”

She gestured madly, shaking the sheaf of papers at him.

“I don’t know.” Viktor answered honestly. “I really don’t, but figuring out the trigger is less important right now. Any news on the phone?”

The envelope, polaroids, and letter all were each bagged. By the door, the officers, a man and a woman, looked frustrated as they shone a light over each and every groove. Makkachin’s barking was incessant now. Normally she was very well behaved and docile but Viktor could tell she was scared at all the commotion.

“No, not really. I was at the lab before Dan called me and I guess it’s been badly corroded. They needed to fix it first before they can even start getting anything off it.”

“Great. Understandable, but..great.”

How long did it take to fix a water damaged iPhone? Viktor wasn’t sure exactly, he hadn’t needed to deal with that kind of thing before. Mila knelt next to his frightened dog, shushing at her and reaching out to scrub her ruff. The whine Makka gave tore at Viktor’s heart.

He was sent to pack. The experience was entirely too surreal, felt dreamy and adjacent, and when he was done Viktor was left looking at three small suitcases.  
His life only warranted three suitcases, and one of those was half filled with Makkachin’s favourite toys.  
Where had his life gone?

“I’m going to need one hell of a vacation after this,” Viktor announced upon stepping back into the living room, dragging one of them out while he texted Yurio. “What do you think Mila? The bahamas maybe? Or the caribbean?”

“If you’re not taking me with you, I really don’t give a shit, Viktor.” The woman glanced back at him and for the first time, Viktor noticed she was without makeup, clearly as stressed as him.

Her under eyes were smudged with purple, her mouth a pale, almost unnoticeable line on her face. There was a hint of acne on her chin. At once she looked less lively and more human than he’d ever seen her and Viktor thought to himself that whoever she decided to share a bed with should be very honoured indeed.

He also wondered if she might be able to show him a couple of tricks. Almost twenty six and he’d yet to outgrow his acne either, and though it was significantly less noticeable than it was when he’d been seventeen there were still fewer things more embarrassing than interviewing a perp with a spotty chin.

Perhaps he should have paid more attention when his coach had applied it for him, far far back in the day.

“Do you have everything?” Mila asked, concern sliding into her voice, and Viktor shrugged.

“I have everything I need. Just need Makkachin’s food and baggies.” He said, and upon hearing her name the poodle, who’d begun to make stressed rounds about the livingroom, trotted over and jumped to rest her front paws against his shoulders, whining. Smiling sympathetically he carded his hands through her fur in the way she liked best.

“I guess you didn’t find anything?”

“No.” Mila shook her head, looking over at the officers.

Gloria Dobbs, a pretty woman with her dark hair pulled back into a stern bun, shook her head and folded her arms with a shrug. “No, there’s nothing. We’ve already been around to knock on a few doors and nobody saw or heard anything out of place either.”

Unsurprising, it would have been done sometime during the deep hours of the night after all. 

“The envelope is kinda thick though.” Viktor gently urged the whimpering dog to the floor, stepped over to the door and experimentally pulled it shut.

There really wasn’t a lot of room between the door and the jam, he reflected with a heavy frown, then dropped down to peer around the bottom. 

“And it was clean.” He pushed his pinky into the tiny space underneath and when he withdrew it, it came away smudged with grime. “It was also deliberately placed.”

“I guess you haven’t lost any spare keys lately?” The male officer spoke up, a tall and soft faced man by the name of Chesterfield Manning. 

“No, and the list of people who have a copy is pretty slim.” Viktor responded as he stood up, pushing off the wall. “I’ll get it to you though.”

“Appreciated. Look, we gotta get going, we’re still not done around here.” Dobbs’s expression was apologetic as she handed the evidence bags over. “You’ll be alright getting to the station right?”

“Yeah of course.” Viktor’s thumb rubbed against the plastic, his eyes hooded. Yuuri’s red eye burned into the back of Viktor’s retinas.

He gets to the station, driven for once by Mila. The drive itself is silent, not even the radio giving the quiet a background noise to fill the nothing in their ears. Instead it’s heavy again, weighed down by worry, concern, fright and, on Viktor’s end of things at least, a hint of violation. Makkachin enjoys the ride at least, her nose pushed out the crack Mila had given the backseat window.  
Hopefully it will perk her up.

Dan’s office is at once filled with a nervous energy and remarkably still. Viktor doesn’t even see dust motes in the shine of the overhead lighting when he drops into one of the guest chairs, legs crossing automatically.

“The killers officially gone off the deep end.” Viktor doesn’t wait, jumping right into the briefing. “He’s been spiralling the entire time but whatevers triggered him, it’s escalated passed the breaking point. We’re already at stage three.” He nodded to the polaroids in Dan’s hands. “As you can clearly see.”

“That he’s deliberately seeking us out at our homes too...There are a lot of things that have been happening with this investigation that he’s never done.” Mila adds, giving Viktor a sideways look before focusing her attention on their chief. “He’s been uncharacteristically sloppy. I’d wonder if it was a copycat if not for, you know.” She nodded her chin at the evidence bags.

“There were some indicators in the last murder that something else was going on,” Viktor put forth. “And it was bound to happen eventually, maybe even soon given it’s been years and he’s been at it regularly, but this is dramatic. I’m not sure how much longer we have before Yuu-Katsuki will be. Well. He doesn’t have long.”

Dan’s expression is sharper than the straight razor Viktor’s grandfather gave him over a decade ago. It makes his tired spine tingle a little and he knows that this time around, his slip had certainly been noticed.  
Viktor still meets the man’s gaze unwaveringly.

Dan’s eyes swing back and forth between he and Mila for a moment, and then he sits back and folds his large arms over his chest. He looks old, grey and tired. This case has been screwing with all of them.

“I see.

Katsuki’s phone has been repaired while you two were out. We were fortunate, most of the data in his contacts list has been salvaged but that’s not something you need to worry about.”

Dan gave Viktor a look that made the detective’s gut tighten suspiciously.

“Nikiforov, you’re off the case.”

“What?!” Mila’s voice was an explosion of noise and motion next to him but for his part, Viktor just sort of stared. 

“You’re shitting me!”

“You will not raise your voice at me, Babicheva.” Dan’s voice was cool with warning. “Park your ass before you make a fool of yourself. Nikiforov’s position in this investigation has been compromised.” Dark, dark brown eyes find him again.  
“Frankly, I should’ve booted you the moment the killer mentioned you by name.”

No, this can’t be happening. Viktor’s smile is an automatic defense but it feels shaky around the edges, tremulous.  
Even so, his voice is steady. “Dan, please, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been working this since the beginning, you can’t just toss me out now, not when everything is so crucial?”

He swears to God that if he doesn’t have Yuuri Katsuki safe in his arms within two days time, he’s quitting the force. Viktor doesn’t say this though, instead watching the chief. Dan doesn’t care in the least.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Actually I’m doing more than that because I don’t trust you mucking about out there. Starting today you’re on two weeks paid leave. I’ve already got a temp assigned to Babicheva.”

The silence is ringing uncomfortably in Viktor’s ears. He blinks hard, feeling the ground reel underneath his chair, his feet, and instead breathes in deep. Well, he had been thinking a vacation was in order.  
He just hadn’t expected it to come on this soon.

Mila is just as dumbstruck as him and they must look incredibly pathetic because when Dan leans forward with a sigh, his expression is full of sympathy.

“I know this case is important to you. A bit too important maybe, given how close this is to home. Honestly I’ve been having my doubts about all of this for a while, but while you seem to be...inordinately interested in Katsuki, you’re also one of the best detectives we have right now so I’ve let it slide. But I can’t do that anymore Viktor. You’re off the case and that’s that.”

Well.

Shit.

“While our suspect hasn’t made any threats against you directly, I still don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone so you’ll have an escort at all times. Some familiar faces should do you good.” 

There’s something weird in Dan’s tone but Viktor is too stunned to think much of it. 

“Parker and Gates will be taking first shift with you and will drive you to the motel you’ll be staying in. Now get out of my office. Babicheva, stay.”

Viktor’s legs feel like lead but he stands automatically, the curt dismissal at least a friendly familiarity in all this new, and leaves the office.  
He feels as though he’s just been tarred and feathered with shame. For the very first time in his admittedly not long but very prestigious career, Viktor Nikiforov has been kicked off a case.

~~~~~~

_He’s short but that’s fine, that’s okay, he only misses her height by a scant couple inches. Somehow, someway, the dress that’s been worn by so many useless others, the one she wore on our wonderful night, it fits him marvellously._

_I spent a good long time weaving the hair to his head. He knows full well that I’ve been drugging his food and I will happily admit, the look of haughty loathing he gives me each time is something I enjoy very much. It is exemplary. It is exactly like her and now between the long dark hair and the makeup, it is even more difficult to tell the difference._

_Even after all this time I still remember her preferences. Dramatic and nude. He’s lovely, a sweet and young and wonderful bride. He looks like her. I don’t understand it but somehow he looks just like her._

_But I do wonder, will this one be able to do what the others could not? By the time this letter reaches you, I shall hopefully have found out one way or another. I’m likewise certain you will have as well. His corpse, I’m sure, will be just as attractive in death as it is in life._

_And I admit, by the day I’ve grown more and more impatient. I want nothing more than to bring my sweet’s final dreams to life and if that means stringing the boy up with hooks and chains and forcing him to dance until he’s dead then by God I’ll do it._

_I am tired. I want this to end.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD


	7. Mr. "Born to Lose"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -whispers softly- c o n g r a t u l a t i o n s

It doesn’t really sink in until he’s checking the motel bed for bed bugs and Makkachin is nosing at a corner with the avid determination only a fascinating new smell could give her.

He turns his back against the side of the mattress, sinks to the floor.

“I can’t believe this,” He mutters, staring wide eyed at the ceiling. Somehow, it’s even uglier than his own. “This is all wrong, this can’t…”

He’s devastated.

What the hell had just happened?

The motel room is full of 70’s chic, entrenched in terrible green carpeting and wood paneling that Viktor’s pretty sure isn’t actually real wood. The bedspread has been updated at least, and is a ‘soothing’ shade of mint.

There’s not a hint of blue to be seen but even so, somehow when the curtain-muted light hits the paneling in just such a way, Viktor is immediately reminded of Yuuri’s ferocious red eyed glare.  
He’s still at a loss as to what Yuuri had been trying to convey aside from rage, because even in the hazy lines of his memory the photograph’s expression reeked of loss and desperation.

Though there’s not much point in thinking about this anymore. 

Viktor spends the morning moping about the motel room, sulkily flipping through television channels while Parker and Gates, a pair of older women who’d tried to mockingly pinch his cheeks when he’d first joined the force, conversed quietly at the small dining table. 

They don’t really try to draw him into it, which Viktor is grateful for because the only things he wants to do right now are cuddle his dog and pout.

The television fails completely to divert his attention away from his circumstances. Viktor feels agitated, restless. His feet are itching to pound pavement and get answers and to be explicitly barred from doing so is a unique brand of hell.

Inevitably his thoughts fall back to Dan’s office. His resignation takes the plug off his ability to postulate and Viktor goes at it silently with all the power of his not inconsiderable brain.

Dan had seemed out of sorts.

More obviously out of sorts than he’d been anyways. The customary redness of stress had faded from his face to be replaced with a tired grey, and Dan had actually called Viktor by his first name.  
He never did that, not even when they were pounding back drinks together out of the office. Dan firmly believed in treating his co-workers with at least a modicum of professionalism and though he let them call him by his given name all they wanted, refused to return the favour.  
He’d missed it then, as filled with distress as he was. Perhaps Viktor was straining too hard, putting too much imagination into this but he could have sworn he heard the man’s voice almost seem to shake.

There was something more to this than he’d been let onto.

Viktor gazed at the TV unseeingly. Just throwing him off wouldn’t have effected Dan so obviously. Actually it wouldn’t have affected him at all, Dan did not give a shit about that kind of thing. 

He wished he had a better memory. He wished he could go back to the office and watch it all again, this time with the eyes of an observer instead of a participant. Thinking furiously the detective closed his eyes, pulling every bit and piece of the afterimages left of Dan’s office into his forethoughts, tugging through them.

What could have made Dan so deeply unsettled?  
At this point it was the loosest kind of conjecture, the kind that Viktor hated, but Dan had mentioned that Yuuri’s contacts list had been salvaged from the wreck that was his iPhone. 

Viktor had been so blindsided by being all but thrown out of the station the very next moment that the knowledge hadn’t had time to process.

It could very well be that the timing was a coincidence. They’d been running the conjecture train after all but Viktor couldn’t shake the gut feeling that it wasn’t just happenstance. Had something on that list alarmed his normally unflinching chief?

There were few things, it seemed to Viktor, that could manage that. Fewer that had to do with a list of phone numbers, leaving him with only one option actually - that Dan had recognized one of them.

Which was a pretty chilly thought. Viktor’s arms tightened around Makkachin and he pushed his nose into her ruff, breathing in deeply.

To go further with the loose and messy assumptions he was making, Viktor began to wonder if it might somehow be related to himself as well.  
Just having his home invaded by their suspect, while terrifying enough, was a pretty piss poor excuse to throw him off a case he’d spent years working on, and was presently leading. 

And yeah, maybe he and Mila had been concerned before that his personal feelings about the figure skater could get him thrown off but at the end of the day Viktor was a professional and knew better than to let that interfere with an investigation.

What was a good reason to get kicked off an investigation, no matter how senior you were, was a conflict of personal interest.

It was making Viktor a little queasy to run so far down the rabbit hole like this but left with nothing else but soap operas and a couple of babysitters to keep his mind company, what else was he supposed to do with it?  
It was Dan’s own fault, really.

So, a number that Dan recognized combined with this imaginary conflict probably indicated someone they were both familiar with as at least an acquaintance, but with how pale Dan had seemed it was probably somebody closer.

A fellow officer then.  
God, and wasn’t that a sickening thought? 

Viktor grimaced and let his wild theorizing go, deciding to focus on the very dramatic fight Abby was having with Christine, the TV loud. In the background, Parker was debating the merits of pizza. Gates wanted Chinese, she knew a fantastic restaurant just a handful of blocks from here.

Viktor kind of wanted them to go away. Their uniforms were only serving to highlight the painful position he’d found himself in.

Two weeks, and meanwhile the hunt for the doe eyed athlete Viktor had somehow found himself enamoured with, was going on without him. The dreamy vision of Yuuri reaching for him, seeming to yell out for help without words, punched at his brain.

Viktor threw his eyes out the window, determined to rid himself of it.

A special hell indeed.

Afternoon fell into evening with the kind of lopsidedness that arose from forced idleness. 

Gates and Parker had compromised by ordering neither pizza nor Chinese, so unexpectedly, Viktor found himself munching on fries while they gossiped and played cards. Second shift was due to arrive any moment.  
It was probably going to be a rookie that got to putz around with him during the night who he wouldn’t know very well, and even though he’d wanted the two older women to beat it earlier Viktor already missed them.

Though it was probably the familiarity he was missing. 

This entire situation was unprecedented and Viktor was hard pressed to cope with it, especially given that he’d wasted an entire day that could have been used to find the young Japanese man.

Viktor cut himself off. Yuuri was beyond him now, he would just have to trust in Mila and whoever Dan had thrown at her to replace him.  
Viktor would just have to be patient and keep his ass, and brain, firmly planted in this shitty little room that smelled faintly like pot and mould.

Yeah. Right. Patient, he could do that.

It was indeed a pair of newbies that relieved the two women. Gates and Parker had kept him company but the rookies elected to stay in their patrol car, munching at snacks and no doubt bitching about babysitting duty. From the bed and out the window, Viktor scowled at their wide gesturing.

It was getting onto eight and Viktor was feeling even less grounded than before. It was an unsettling feeling.

He laid down. He tried to sleep. He attempted to watch a movie, read a book, play a small round of fetch with Makkachin.  
He paced. The length of the tiny room took between nineteen to twenty steps and Viktor found himself counting each and every one of them as a thick sense of unease settled on the back of his shoulders. 

He could leave.  
He could hit a convenience store, or take Makkachin for a walk, or both, or, he didn’t know, go harass a prostitute or a drunkard or something because that’s what bored policemen did.

He could leave.

Viktor didn’t leave and instead began to count the length of the room combined with that of the bathroom. He’d actually become quite focused on the admittedly meditative, if perhaps odd to look at, exercise, and was beginning to feel quite tired in spite of the dread broiling in his stomach.

So when his phone rang, Viktor almost pissed himself.  
He stared at it wild eyed and then dove, scrambling for the suddenly slippery mobile.  
Had they found him, had-

The call was disconnected the instant he picked up.

The detective paused, regarding the flashing of ‘private number’ and frowned.

There it was again.  
The feeling of hyper awareness that plucked at the short hairs of his nape was back. It was heady, headier even, combined with the odd jilted suspense which he’d been steeping in until then and Viktor carefully drew in a breath as he navigated to his home screen.

A text message was there and when he opened it, he was met with an address.

That it had come from his former partner’s number pushed the unease Viktor felt to new heights. His heart squeezed and he was rendered breathless, pain sinking into his stomach. The platinum haired man looked out the window, more lost than ever.

The patrol car was still there, parked scant feet from the slit of the window, and Viktor let his eyes drop back to his iPhone screen. Mouth dry, Viktor tapped out a reply.

‘Y did u send me this’ was shot off, spelled in just such a way that would invoke Yakov’s fury and hopefully with it, a quick reply.  
There was nothing. The wild theories Viktor had been pondering earlier began to seep back in.

But no. That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be, he was being foolish and stupid. There was no way Yakov, his former partner, his elder, his teacher, could practice such an abomination. The older officer had always regarded the actions of the killer with disgust, glaring at the dumped bodies disdainfully down the length of a cigarette.

Didn’t Yakov smoke Basics?

The air was sucked out of him in a gust and Viktor turned to sit on his bed, glowering down at his phone and feeling insurmountably stressed. With rising hysteria he tried to call Mila, who’s texting and calls had been nonexistent since this morning, and found nothing but a voicemail.

Well fuck that, he’d just spam her number until she answered. 

In the end it took about three minutes of relentless call button mashing before the woman finally, finally answered with an enraged snarl.

“What?!”

“Is it Yakov.”

“Ah-...Viktor, hi. What?”

“The number on Yuuri’s phone.” Viktor couldn’t breathe, fist clenching on the bedspread. “Is it Yakov’s.”

There was a sound of shuffling, of breathing, in the distance Viktor thought he heard mutters but that was it. When Mila finally spoke again it was with clear reluctance, stilted and slow.

“Viktor, you know I can’t tell you that.”

“Mila-!”

“Look Viktor I gotta go, I’ll call you back in a bit oka-”

Viktor cut her off in a voice that felt rough in his throat but sounded sweet to his ears. “Mila you redhaired witch, I swear to God if you hang up on me you will Not like what happens.”

“...Give me a minute.”

Viktor took said minute to close his eyes and focus on his breathing, ears quirked for the door. More shuffling, more voices, muffled and indistinct under the faint sound of footsteps. Looking for a quiet, safe place to talk, he thought as he opened his eyes and glanced again out the window.

Nothing new.

“Okay.” His partner’s sigh was explosive. “Yes, it was Yakov’s. That’s why Dan kicked you out but look, he-We had a meeting and debriefed right? We called Cialdini and that kid down to the station, just in case there was a perfectly good reason why it could be there.”

“There wasn’t.” Viktor felt strange, numb, kind of warm.

“...No. Nothing they could think of at least. We went over to question him but-”

This sigh sounded aggrieved. “I don’t know he did it but he gave us the slip. I think a cruiser caught up to him briefly and there was a bit of a chase but in the end we lost him. Katsuki’s not here so we’re trying to figure out where Yakov is holding him.”

His vision was blurry and when he blinked, he leaked. The world was seesawing madly, his jaw was clenched so tightly it hurt as it all slotted into place.

It fit.

Fuck him, it fit.

“The woman he’s killing these people over…” 

Mila hummed.

“Lilia Baranovskaya.”

Lilia Baranovskaya, prima of the Bolshoi Ballet company. Viktor’s mind flicked briefly to the newspaper clippings decorating Yakov’s wall, the articles about the ballerina’s tragic demise had taking on a macabre new meaning. She’d been killed in the middle of a performance, crushed to death by a fallen lighting rig. It’d been the talk of the arts scene for at least a year afterward.

“She had green eyes though…” Viktor mumbled into his hand. “Why would they all have dark eyes if her’s were green? And she died so long ago, it’s been ten years!”

“Green isn’t a very common colour,” Mila suggested. “Maybe he had to...wait-Shit! I have to go, I’ll call you back soon. Don’t go anywhere!”

He was abruptly met with a dial tone but Viktor felt much too numb to so much as blink in surprise. Ending the call, the man allowed his hand to drop limply between his knees, and used the other to cover his face.

“He told me…” Viktor whispered into his palm, reflecting on the visit he’d had with his elder just the night previous. His teeth ground down hard enough to hurt. “Going insane with the boredom huh…Fucking Christ Yakov, you senile old man.”

Come to think of it, the last body had been found not too long at all after Yakov’s unwilling retirement three months ago. That, combined with the sudden dearth of anything meaningful to occupy himself with had probably spurned the old man’s obsession to newer, crazier heights.  
The letter had said he wanted to end this.

Viktor’s eyes opened and he lifted the phone, swiping back into his texts and grimacing tightly down at the address, an incriminating stain on his screen.

Innocent until proven guilty, he reminded himself. And while the circumstances certainly said something, they were still only circumstances. 

Hell, maybe the man was even being framed. It certainly wasn’t beyond reason. Yakov had made a lot of enemies in his long, expansive career. Scrubbing his face roughly, Viktor took in a sharp breath then looked up as the door swung open.

A kid, plain faced and brown haired, looked deeply uncomfortable as he peeked in. The young officer smiled shakily and held up a bag of McDonalds.

“We, uh…” The door shut behind the officer. “I know it’s late but we were wondering if you might be hungry!”

Bullshit. Viktor’s call to Mila had been discovered and now his guard was closing in. He smiled automatically, as warm and friendly as ever, and nodded.

“I’d love some! I bet Makkachin would too, wouldn’t you?” He glanced down at the poodle laid out next to his bed.  
Makkachin’s tail slowly began to wag.

“But I think she needs to go out. She hasn’t in awhile so I should get her to do her business before we go to sleep.” He reached to the bedside table and lifted Makkachin’s leash, giving the young man a hopeful look.

“You wouldn’t mind if I went and did that first, would you?”

“Uh, well, actually if it’s alright with you I think I could? You’re probably really tired!”

This rookie was a terrible actor and didn’t quite have a grasp on his authority yet. Viktor almost felt sorry for him, given what he was about to do.

“Ah, you’re right, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” He stood and approached the younger, shorter man, holding out the leash. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

The kid looked a little relieved. He should probably work on that. “Of course not, sir!”

Rookie reached out to take the leash, gaze dropping for it, and Viktor lashed out cat quick.  
Latching onto a skinny wrist and pulling the man off balance had the boy stumbling right into Viktor’s personal space, exactly as the detective intended. His foot kicked out, ankle quickly wrapping around a calf and sweeping the kid’s feet right out from under him.

From there, getting the younger man into a sleephold was child’s play.  
Viktor grimaced tightly with the effort it took to restrain the struggling cop, growling in strain with all the bucking and writhing, punching and kicking. He tightened his grip, pulling until his arms ached, eyes flickering between the cop’s reddening wheezing face and the window.

If this rookie’s partner was any smarter than him, Viktor didn’t have a lot of time.

Thankfully a lot of time wasn’t needed for the cop in his arms to pass out and a few seconds in, the sudden dead weight sagging against him just about tripped Viktor up. The magic of pinched arteries.

“Easy now, easy…” The detective whispered to himself, lowering the kid gingerly to the floor. 

Viktor jammed his fingers under the kid’s jaw and sighed as he counted steady beats.

He was going to get in SO much shit for this. Rifling quickly through the unconscious cop’s pockets and belt, Viktor swiftly removed the man of his wallet, his firearm, his taser and his handcuffs. The additional glock wasn’t really necessary, Viktor still had his own standard issue after all but it never hurt to have a back up. He pushed it into the back of his slacks after a quick check at the safety.

Flicking open the wallet, he tilted his head.  
Richard Cockburn.  
Viktor shook his head and dropped it back to the officer’s chest, doling out a consoling pat.

“Your parents must have thought they were very funny. Sorry bout this, Dick.” 

It took a bit more effort than he’d hoped it would to remain out of sight of the window while he dragged the limp body a bit further into the centre of the room, and neither Viktor’s back nor his knee appreciated the strain He still managed to stay light on his feet though, quickly slipping behind the door which the body was now in clear view of.

The detective took a steadying breath, ferociously packed down his nerves, and waited with taser in hand.  
Just as he’d figured there was a knock at the door barely a second after he’d gotten into place, and another officer peeked his head in. The cop’s question died the moment his eyes hit on the downed Richard a few feet away and he reached immediately for his radio.

“Nope.” The resulting pause was all the opening Viktor needed to push the taser hard into the other cop’s shoulder and pull the trigger. Fun thing about tasers. Deployed against the body they made a very effective stun gun.

His eyes clapped upon the man’s face. This one, Viktor knew.

“Sorry, Archie.”

Archie went down immediately with a garbled noise and a convulsion, body stiffened with the 50k volts electrifying his system. He’d be hopefully paralyzed for a minute or so, albeit in quite a significant amount of pain, and Viktor grimaced in sympathy.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. Ah shit.”

In the corner, Makkachin whined and Viktor’s eyes shot up, alighting upon the distressed poodle. She was cowering in the corner, looking at him with eyes that tore at his heart, and Viktor swallowed hard.

“It’s okay. You stay here girl.” Viktor’s nimble fingers quickly snatched up a set of car keys and then he was out the door, slamming it shut behind him and diving into the patrol car.

He fumbled the keys and cursed rapidly, heart pulsing so hard within his chest that he feared it might burst. Finally jamming the key into the ignition the man reefed hard on the gear stick the second the vehicle rumbled to life.  
He reversed out of the parking spot with a squeal, shifted into drive and booked it for the road.

He was panting, Viktor noticed finally, and swallowed dryly as his numb fingers reach down. It takes him a minute of awkward one handed and very distracted driving to rip off the panel under the steering wheel, and the moment he can pause safely he ducks down. Rapidly searching through wires, Viktor finds the one he knows is connected to a GPS, and promptly tears it loose. 

Goodbye backup.

Straightening in his seat, his flesh practically zipping with adrenaline, Viktor reaches out to flick at a switch on the center console. The familiar red and blue comes to life with a blare of noise.  
He can barely hear it over the rush of blood in his ears. What had he just done.

“Fucking hell.” The detective wheezed weakly, gave his head a shake and focused on taking advantage of the path parting for him by the unmistakable light and noise of a cope in a rush. 

What had he just done?

“Fuck, shit, fuck, SHIT!” Viktor hit the steering wheel, palm stinging, and sucked in a wavering breath. “I’m so fucked, oh my God I’m so fucked, I’m so fucked, I’m so fucked. FUCK!”

That sure had spiralled out of control goddamn quick as hell now hadn’t it? Viktor struggles to reign in his panic and adrenaline into something manageable as he slows at a red light before peeling through the intersection. He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going right now, but he can find out.

Fumbling his phone out of his pocket, Viktor multitasks between the screen and the road as he pulls up the address Yakov had sent him. Finally his breathing is beginning to slow, the tight clench of fear in his chest relaxing now that he has a goal.

Dan was going to kill him, Viktor thought as he pulled the wheel carefully, pumping the pedals at his feet. The tires screech and the patrol car drifts around a tight corner, scattering a wave of startled pedestrians.  
He glanced briefly at the address.

Viktor knew exactly what this was.

Lilia Baranovskaya’s little renovation project, purchased just before her death, was a secret only because it just didn’t come up in conversation very often. Viktor had been there all of once, taken by Yakov in an odd fit of sentimental nostalgia. The detective’s short term memory was piss poor but his longterm was ace. He knew exactly where he was going.

The estate in question was a handsome colonial, nestled so deep in a halfway forgotten and mostly abandoned suburb that it may as well not even exist.  
The surrounding somewhat more populated areas were a solid middle class, something that had supposedly made the neighbourhood safe enough to attract the prima’s attentions. 

A quarter of the way there he turned off his sirens.  
Three quarters and almost an hour in, Viktor stopped completely, insecurity digging at him.

He did not want to go into this alone. It almost made him regret ruining the GPS.

He’d silenced his phone about fifteen minutes into this admittedly pretty stupid exploit once it had exploded with calls and texts, and he hadn’t paid it attention since then.  
Now, with the night a cold claustrophobic shroud and the stolen patrol car idling at the side of an empty quiet street, Viktor figured perhaps he should.  
He reached over into the passenger seat and grabbed it with clammy, clumsy fingers.

Viktor flicked the screen to life and was immediately beset with a truly impressive amount of missed calls and text messages.  
Idly curious the detective checked his call history, finding the majority had been from Dan and Mila, but there were a few from Yurio as well and a fairly solid number of his coworkers. 

Ignoring his voicemail for the moment, Viktor took a screenshot of the last message he’d gotten from Yakov and threw it Mila’s way, then powered down the mobile with a strange sense of empty trepidation.

Was this the kind of anxiety Yuuri had to deal with daily? If it was, Viktor could understand why it took the man so long to get ready in the mornings, why he needed to brace himself so badly. The thought of going through his day to day life with the toothy vice like grip on his lungs he was feeling now, it was galling.

He’d never felt like this going into a possible arrest before, this hollow feeling. Then again, Viktor reminded himself, this investigation hadn’t exactly been average. 

His being removed from the investigation, assaulting two of his fellow officers, stealing their patrol car and gunning it for an address sent by his mentor who was probably-maybe the serial killer he’d been hunting down for the past three years could have had something to do with it too.

Viktor could use this though. He met his own eyes in the rearview mirror and took a deep, fortifying breath, pulling away from the curb. There was an exhaust misted crunch of tire on gravel, painfully loud. He was back on his way.

Ten minutes going at a solid 20 mph and meeting a grand total of one other car on the way, and Viktor was pulling onto a wildly overgrown lawn.  
The house was a lit up ghost of gauzy curtains and dilapidation, looking odd surrounded by the surrounding other shells of homes. 

Viktor slipped out of the car, breath slow and steady as he eased the liberated firearm from his waistband. Holding it ready by his side he started to sidewind his way through the waist high weeds, the leather of his shoes careful and easy.

It was about as quiet as a corpse, Viktor morbidly thought. In the distance there were the constant sounds of the city, the dazzle of lights, the faint rumble of an aeroplane carving its way overhead.  
Here there wasn’t even the chirping of crickets. Viktor’s breathing and the crunch of dirt and twigs under his feet were all that kept him company.

It was also cold as fuck. The detective briefly chastised himself for not thinking to bring a coat, the bare skin of his forearms prickling uncomfortably and his shirt way too thin. No time to pause to roll down his sleeves though.

The curtains were thin, ruffling in the mild wind exposed to them by broken glass. Licking his lips, Viktor paused.

There had been movement, that of a person. He continued his approach, quicker now as he brought his weapon to eye level, glaring at the door down the line of his sight.

The doorknob rattled, went silent for a second then twisted and the door swung open limply. Viktor felt something in his chest jerk, flicked off the safety.

“Freeze! Hands where I can see them!” 

The shout was a completely automatic response, made before he’d even registered who he was looking at. Viktor’s breath caught in his lungs and, far away, felt his jaw drop.

Yuuri blinked dazedly at him from where he stood on the threshold, long hair lifting in the mild breeze. His hands jerked, quaked, and gradually lifted to show the emptiness in his palms.

Between the exorbitant horror-flick amount of blood, the smudges of dirt and the sheer milk white of Yuuri’s dazed and traumatized expression the kid looked like a ghost.

The skater began to shuffle and heave himself forward, left leg looking limp and his entire body curled in like he was getting ready to collapse. Viktor flicked the safety and dropped the heavy glock, long legs and adrenaline carrying him quicker than he’d ever run before.

The first stair was the dancer’s literal downfall. Yuuri toppled, a flutter of black, white and red.  
Viktor’s knees crashed into the middle stair, arms folding around the man and catching him, barely.

He shifted them, inched down to the ground and cradled Yuuri gently, looking him over. 

There was blood, fresh, all over the young man’s torso, streaks of it on his face, on the gown that was already rusted with it. He reached down, feeling carefully around the man’s gut, but found nothing. Someone else’s then, the killer? Viktor wasn’t sure but he also wasn’t about to go running into the building to find out.

The kid was a fucking mess and his eyes were fluttering rapidly. 

“Shit. Hey, hey, Yuuri, stay with me!’ Viktor carefully tapped a bruised cheek, encouraging the beaten man to stay conscious.

Yuuri’s eyes were sluggish, his pupils not quite right. It was likely the skater was concussed and if he fell asleep it would not help matters.

His other hand paused over the corseting in the back. Viktor debated for a moment letting it loose, Yuuri was no doubt having issues breathing because of it, but decided against it. If there was any internal bleeding, the tightness of the gowns bodice may act as something of a tourniquet.

“Hey, Yuuri, hey, you gotta stay with me alright? You need to stay awake for me, sweetheart.”

Viktor smiled with all sorts of emotions he didn’t feel, watch as Yuuri blinked, dazed, and nodded.

“Good, good. We’re going to get you help soon okay? So just stay awake.”

Except it had taken an hour for Viktor to get here and he’d been speeding for most of it. He looked over his shoulder at the patrol car, and the radio therein, before turning back to the man in his arms.

“I’ll be right back Yuuri, I’m going to radio for an ambulance.” Viktor said as he gingerly shifted the worryingly chilled body, being sure to carefully support the man’s neck as he began to lay him down.

Yuuri instantly gave a breath that croaked in what could have been a whimper, and in a second his hand was latching into Viktor’s shirtfront. The grip was weak, barely holding on.

The look in his dark eyes, the ones engraved in Viktor’s mind since the start of this mess, was pleading and terrified and it broke Viktor’s heart.

“I’ll be right back, I promise, I’m not going anywhere.” The detective unwrapped the fingers wrapped in his shirt and set Yuuri’s hand on his chest. “Stay like that for me, don’t move.”

Giving his fellow skater a reassuring smile, Viktor launched to his feet and ran back for the patrol car. He thumbed the radio on and Viktor thought again that he was in So much shit.

“Dispatch please respond, I need a bus for a wounded civilian, over.”  
There was a crackle. Viktor’s heart felt ready to burst.

“10-4, what’s the situation, over.”

Relief. It really was a poignant feeling. “Scene is quiet but I have a BOLO and I’m riding solo.” Viktor paused and sheepishly added, “GPS is out, I’ll need to give you the address, over.”

A pause, static, and then a sardonic chuckle.

“You’re a dead man, Nikiforov.”

For some reason, Viktor felt himself relax and when he returned the laugh, it was genuine, if wry. “Yeah, copy that. If Dan doesn’t kill me, Archie will.”

“We already have your location and we’ve got people on the way. Sit tight, Viktor. Over.”

Yuuri was right where he left him and hadn’t moved, face turned toward the empty night sky. He was so still Viktor was momentarily concerned that he’d passed on, but then he caught the delicate rise and fall of Yuuri’s chest. Relief was shortly lived though, the kid’s eyes were closed.  
Yuuri had passed out.

Honestly by the looks of him, it was a miracle he hadn’t done it sooner. 

“Shit…” Viktor bit his lips, thoughts of a coma scratching at his mind.

The grass, long and wild, felt damp and cold and Viktor wondered why he hadn’t felt it kneeling before. Adrenaline, probably, but he brushed the thought aside as he leaned over the young man.

Tenderly, Viktor smoothed Yuuri’s bangs aside. The man’s skin was clammy, bathed in a cold sweat and his hair was soaked with it. Tenderly feeling about the boy’s skull, Viktor pulled his hand away and was relieved to find it clean. 

The kid’s neck was a mess of angry bruising that had indicated a serious throttling, so Viktor checked Yuuri’s pulse at his wrist instead, holding the bony wrist and pushing his fingers into it.

It was thready and it was weak but it was there. Viktor blinked hard, his eyes were itching madly with the prospect of tears. How had he grown so emotionally connected to this young man?  
This young, damaged man who was in a very bad way. Viktor smoothed his hand again over the dark head, trying to ignore the clumps of glue.

There were thick streaks of mascara smudged around his eyes, a hint of a handsome nude lipstick that Viktor recalled Yakov mentioning his wife had preferred. He’d never seen the victim’s faces outside of grainy polaroids and the knowledge that Yakov had even done their makeup was making him queasy.

Had Viktor known his partner at all?

“You’re going to be okay,” Viktor nodded, praying that he was right. 

In the distance were sirens. Before them the house continued to loom, a threat and a mystery and Viktor frowned up at it.

“What the hell happened?” He asked into the air.

Viktor didn’t get an answer.

Not right away at least.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As it turned out there was one more thing that the pisslord upstairs could take from him.

Yuuri was kicked awake, the air pushed out of his ribs with such force it made him wheeze through his groan. A bowl was thrust into his face, spoonless as usual, and still coughing from breathlessness he took it with a hand that shivered all the time now, no matter how hard he tried to stop it.

The man retreated, leaving Yuuri to drag himself up the wall with a heave and a groan. The motion made him pant, and he blinked away the customary lightheadedness while he lifted the bowl to his lips and sipped.

Campbells, probably. It wasn’t even warmed up this time.

This time Yuuri noticed the grimy texture and grimaced darkly, shooting a disgusted expression in the man’s general direction. He dearly wished he could see better through the dark and astigmatism so he could throw the bowl in their face.

He couldn’t though, could barely make out the man’s shadow through the pitch and the smudge, sitting in that godforsaken chair just out of reaching distance. 

And watching him.  
Always, always watching him.

Yuuri wanted to be sick.

Instead he choked down the tainted broth, spooned the solid bits into his mouth with fingers that were too eager for food to stop. The knowledge that it was drugged provoked again the feelings of helplessness he thought he’d laughed off just a few hours ago.

Yuuri thought it had been hours at least. It was hard to tell.

The killer though, whoever he was, was still a pathetic wretch. He finished the meager meal in what felt like seconds and instead of waiting for the man to retrieve the cheap thing he hurled it at him.

Yuuri missed, judging by the distant clatter. Bitterly he reflected that a headshot had probably been too much to ask for, settled against the wall and watched the faintly darker outline of what was probably the creep in question.

The man didn’t leave this time though. There were no footsteps, no faint noise of a door closing, no creaking of stairs. Apprehension started to pull at him. Yuuri swallowed nervously, confused and alarmed.

Why wasn’t the man leaving?  
He always left after Yuuri had eaten, always. Granted Yuuri was sure the man came back down, he often had a full bottle of water and an empty bucket, but that only seemed to be when Yuuri was asleep.

And while it was terrible to think about the man taking liberties with his body while he was out cold, this was somehow worse. It reminded Yuuri of vultures who would loom and lurk over some poor animal and wait for it to die.

His heartbeat hastened. The mental comparison served no comfort and Yuuri felt his glare begin to wither into something that was probably rather a bit more apprehensive.  
But no. No. For some reason the captor seemed to like it more when Yuuri was visibly angered. It was not out of sadistic delight he was pretty sure. The man was gentle and while it pained Yuuri to do anything with the killer’s feelings in mind, he needed that gentleness.

It was only a correlation, a slim one at that, but Yuuri was certain he was right so he narrowed his eyes, regarding what he hoped was the asshole in question with all of his disdain.

‘You’re not even good enough to be the dirt on my heel.’He wanted to say. ‘You are beneath me,’ 

Yuuri didn’t. Verbal communication was one thing he’d not been able to bring himself to do, which seemed to suit the stranger just fine.

He could feel it now. 

Yuuri shifted tiredly, wincing at the strain in his muscles at even that simple motion. He didn’t want to fall asleep, not with that man looming over him like this, he couldn’t fall asleep. 

This was so wrong, this was too different. Oh God, what if he never woke back up?  
Yuuri found himself deeply regretting eating the small meal. He should have thrown it to begin with after all.

But he was so hungry. Panic was stinging and pinching at him as his eyes began to close and Yuuri jerked, turned his face into the wall jabbed his overgrown nails deep into the tender meat of his thigh. The pain jolted at him, gave him the extra bit of wakefulness he hadn’t even noticed slipping away, and he gasped into the wall.

Maybe he could push passed this, Yuuri thought desperately as he scratched hard at his leg. Maybe, just maybe, now that he was aware of the drugs he could push through. His thumbnail bit in hard and he held it there.

Focused as hard as he was on the simple task of staying awake, Yuuri didn’t notice his captor moving until the man was ripping his head away from the wall by his hair. That pain certainly woke him up but the fist that crashed into his cheek once, twice, did not.

His body was dropped.

Nerveless, Yuuri twitched on his back, blinked, spat out the mouthful of blood he was suddenly choking on. He hurt, his tongue especially and his head was spinning ferociously, starbursts seeming to light up in his brain.  
Mouth dribbling with something, Yuuri shifted, finally pulling in enough awareness to recognize that his limbs were his own and he could move them.

Not enough to push himself up though. He managed to roll onto his side, the sleep pulling at his lids too tempting to ignore anymore. Yuuri’s body had decided it was done.

His eyes closed.

And then they opened.

The hangover was familiar by now but seemed harder to shake for some reason. Forcing his brain into cognisance was a legitimate effort and his limbs, Yuuri couldn’t even feel them.

He choked out a sound that could have been a groan in better circumstances and made to lick his dry lips, the motion automatic and thoughtless, and promptly winced with another breathy noise. 

No. Nope. Hurt. Hurt bad. 

His tongue was on fire. For that matter his jaw didn’t feel too awesome either, pounding a headache deep, deep into his skull and sending up flares with any attempted motion.  
Yuuri blinked rapidly, desperate to clear the fog he was under, and breathed in rapid, tiny high pitched noises.

He was scared.

It took so much effort to find his hand, and wasn’t that a strange thought. Yuuri could see it, just beyond his head, but it felt so far away and impossible to reach.

But then, finally, there it was. It didn’t want to move beyond a twitch though and Yuuri wondered if perhaps it had been nailed to the floor somehow. An extra effort found Yuuri dragging it down and with that, the rest of his body came back to him.

It was distant but it was there, dissolving his worry over that particular matter. 

Clumsy and slow, Yuuri managed to get his weight beneath him, pulling his heavy front off the floor, and sat back on his hip, bad leg carefully avoided, world spinning around his ears. Reaching up the man prodded gingerly at his face, finding where the pain started and ended. Yuuri could remember what happened now, his recollection muzzy but clearing further by the second.

Suckerpunched. Even when the asshole got aggressive he was a coward. Typical. Yuuri spat, winced, wiped away the wetness clinging to his chin and wondered how terribly he’d bit his tongue. It felt like it was all there. Most of it anyways. The dancer briefly hoped he wouldn’t be stuck with a permanent lisp. As if he wasn’t already embarrassing enough.

It was then that he noticed it, the prickling.

White and rusty copper. The thing he was wearing was itchy, made it hard to breathe and hard to move and it was…

Round eyed, Yuuri beheld the mass of staining that he prayed wasn’t, but probably was blood.  
He let out a low moan of pure horror. 

It took him a second to wade through the terror he was suddenly bathing in to fully process he’d been changed again, the realization coming extremely belatedly. A wedding dress, right out of his most humiliating daydreams, clutched him like it was alive. Breaths coming in thick and quick Yuuri gripped the fabric of the skirt in disbelief.

No. 

His head. It was heavy. He’d thought it was just the hangover of whatever drugs he’d been given. When his hand slipped around his bare shoulder to find long, thick, black hair though, Yuuri thought, far far away in the shock, that he’d been mistaken.

His lip quivered.

Yuuri didn’t really know the proper terminology to describe how he felt in terms of his gender. Minako had tried to approach him in a conversation about it once but he’d refused to talk about it.  
Hasetsu was small and though the people were generally nice, open and welcoming, the size of the town sometimes showed in their narrow world views. Yuuri had already been bullied hard enough for his physique and his dancing, called slurs and taunted by the worst of them. 

‘Why don’t you just chop it off already,’ They would taunt. ‘You’re already a girl!’

It’d only gotten worse in highschool, when the distant taunting turned into roughing up, extortion and sometimes outright theft. When he realized he was attracted to men in conjunction to women that had been bad enough but putting a label on his gender would only prove them right. Moreso than they already were. 

Or so he’d thought. Coming to the States and moreover, meeting Phichit and his fellow skaters at the club had begun to open him up to the idea of exploration.

Yuuri was in college after all, and experimenting with that kind of thing was just what you were supposed to Do.

He didn’t think it would be like this.

Yuuri’s face twisted through the physical pain, a short sob dropping from his lips, and buried his face in his hands.

He felt like he’d been perverted. He felt as though a deep and intimate part of himself had been taken, violated and twisted then shoved in his face for him to choke on. This was insane. He was going insane. He’d gotten what he’d dreamed of and it was rotten, putrid and stained in the blood of a dozen other people.

This too, he couldn’t help but scream inside his head because his mouth was too busy whimpering and whining. ‘You had to take this too?!’

After what was probably at least an hour Yuuri calmed, more out of pure emotional exhaustion than actually being over the matter. Feeling like a raw and open wound the man had laid back down. His left side was still tender from the previous rude awakening so it was his right he rested on, head pillowed against his eternally sore arm as he blinked lashes heavy with mascara at the dark.

Because of course there’d been that too. Whatever the cowardly man did he didn’t seem to do in halves.  
Bitterly, Yuuri thought that his captor should cut his own damn self in half while they were on the topic. Or grind himself into a thick meaty paste, somehow stuff himself into sausage skins, and feed himself to a pack of dogs that were just as starved as Yuuri was.  
Go big or go home, right?

He hated him. Yuuri felt it in every iota, every cell and neutron that made up his body, that ugly burning rancour. ‘Hate’ actually seemed too gentle of a word to describe what he was feeling, but it was the best one he had.

He hated him. Hated him. Hated him. Genuinely found himself hoping for his captor to be tormented and hurt and killed the exact same way the man had done to so many other people and was now trying to do to Yuuri himself. His mother had always taught him not to bother with hate, that it took up too much of one’s energies and in the end it would only devote one’s self to a person who didn’t even deserve a thought.

He didn’t care. Yuuri didn’t care one single bit, he Hated this man with every centimetre of his being. Hei wasn’t used to feeling this kind of anger, kind of worried himself with how deeply he Was feeling it. 

However.

He waited. The man would be down soon enough.

Nine hundred painfully drawn breaths later he heard it, the soft groan of an opening door and the creaky pad of footsteps down a set of fifteen wooden stairs. 

Distantly his ears picked up on a click and then he was bathed in light.

Yuuri screamed, covered his eyes at the all encompassing and startlingly painful white. This was bigger than the flashlight the pervert brought to take pictures and he scrambled to pull his unwilling body upward, not wanting to be caught prone by whatever plans the fucker had for him this time.

Shit though, it hurt. Yuuri was beginning to lose count of all the ways he was in pain, the burn of the lights a delightful new addition. 

The footsteps were getting closer and when they’d stopped what sounded like barely even a meter away, Yuuri peeled open his eyelids and squinted with a grimace through the slats of his fingers. He had to close them again, they refused to stay open, but eventually his lids cooperated.

With the flashlight the light had been narrow and he’d been unable to see behind it, so used to the dark he’d become. 

His first image of the man since his captivity started was blurry and indistinct, made out of blurs of pale and dark. He was shuffling around still, uncaring of Yuuri for a brief moment, and the young man took the opportunity to get an almost-proper look at what had been his home for the past-

How long?

The wall he’d grown so dependant on was concrete, a dreary slab of unfortunate somewhat pitted grey where it wasn’t covered with old stains, some copper and some faded to a faint sort of brown. More blood, Yuuri sarcastically thought to himself, because that was the biggest thing in interior design this season apparently.

The section of floor he’d been tethered to was either unfinished or dug up, the far edges made of chipped cement. His water jug was blue and his waste bucket was disgusting and the staining on the yellowing dress he’d been forced into when unconscious was a mix of yet more blood, which he’d already guessed, and a significant amount of dirt.

It was the first proper look he’d had at himself in a while and for a second Yuuri glanced at his hands before turning his attention to the foot that had gone numb some time ago, tugging up the hem of the gown.

He looked away immediately, disgusted and horrified both by the sight of his own foot, and clamped his hand over his aching mouth to stifle the nausea that punched into his throat.

It didn’t look infected so much as swollen beyond anything Yuuri had seen before, an unfortunate dimpled mass of purple and black that was choked by the manacle around his ankle, puffed out on either side of it. Up his calf it looked worryingly discoloured and Yuuri prayed that it wasn’t dead.

What he could see of the jagged cut looked dark, scabbed over. Whether or not it was inflamed was impossible to tell.

And he’d been made to dance on that. The pointe shoe he wore looked ballooned and ridiculously small. Were there sores inside? Were they infected?

Would it need to be amputated?

How the hell was he going to get out of here with that?

Breathing as hard and deep as the corset strangling his ribs would allow, Yuuri blinked away wetness and squeezed his eyes shut, his entire body giving a full shudder. He could taste bile on the back of his tongue, acidic and bitter, and forcefully swallowed.

“They always react like that.”

Yuuri’s eyes shot up.

His captor was an intimidating if somewhat plain man, lines of age carving his face into a stern and unhappy expression. He was balding, grey haired, and the hairless dome that was the top of his head shone.  
His eyes were dark. His body was sturdy and wide set, beset by the extra fat that often happened when one got older, and he was dressed in a sweater and dark pants.

He was also unnervingly close. Yuuri flinched back.

“Though a few of them didn’t have it quite so bad. Only the ones I tripped.” The man was looking down at Yuuri’s foot. He looked somewhat sympathetic but mostly he looked nostalgic. “And even then it varied…”

Yuuri clamped back on the insult on the tip of his stinging tongue, newly infuriated. What kind of sick fuck would look yearningly at-

He didn’t want to think about it.

Their eyes met and something of Yuuri’s fury must have leached into his expression because the looming man gave him a longing look and lifted the old and familiar dented black polaroid camera.

Yuuri wanted desperately to claw the stranger’s eyes out but he was paralyzed, stiffened by the rock and a hard place that was his fury and fright.  
His nails itched for it though, oh goodness did they itch.

His captor sighed and straightened arthritically, pulling out the photo and giving it an idle shake as he turned to walk back to the chair.

“I find it odd that out of all of them, you somehow look like her the most.” The man stated gruffly, setting the camera down and seeming to ponder at something. “Given you’re asian, and a man.  
It makes me wonder if you’ll be the one who can finally do it. I’ve been waiting forever, it’s been very frustrating.”

Yuuri felt his heart skip a beat. What in the actual hell…?

“You’re probably very confused. Out of all the other ones I think it’s you who can understand best.” Creep turned around and approached him again, kneeling on one knee and reaching for Yuuri’s feet. 

Yuuri jerked them away but as exhausted, pained and chained as he was, he didn’t manage to evade the wide grip of the killer’s palm. The dancer didn’t know if his heart could take all the rapidity and stuttering the shear stress of the situation was running it through. It felt like it was going to implode, suffocated to death under the bodice’s corset.

The killer’s hands were gentle as they reverently unlaced and pulled off one satin shoe before turning to Yuuri’s bloated foot. Yuuri’s eyes turned round.

“No-”

The sensation almost floored him. Yuuri choked at it, his head going light but feeling much too full. He was going to erupt from it. ‘Tingling’ didn’t quite begin to describe the shattering sensation shaking him to pieces, as if his leg was built with swarming wasps and crushed glass.

It was uncomfortable to the extreme, not quite painful but agonizing all the same and when it abated Yuuri found himself blinking through a veil of hair at the floor just inches away. There was an unfamiliar sound made of wet and breaking static.  
It took his air running out to realize it was him making the godawful noise.  
His jaw had fallen open, reddened saliva pooling below his face. Yuuri gingerly closed it and tried his best to remember how to breathe.

“I hope you’ll be able to pull this off but with that foot.” The man snorted, his voice strangely muffled like he was speaking distantly through a wall of cotton. “Well, we’ll see. I guess I should have taken better care of it. Should’ve taken better care of all them, maybe then this wouldn’t have taken so Goddamn long.”

Yuuri gave his head a light shake, his ears not quite able to catch onto what was being said. It made no sense. It made no sense. His breath whistled in and out, nails curling in the dirt. He noticed they’d been filed and painted a delicate shade of pearl and it made Yuuri want to be sick all over again.

He croaked out a question in Japanese, English failing him for a second then cleared his voice and tried again. “Wh-what...are you talking about? What…”

“My wife. She was working on something before she died. She was excited about it, very inspired. Something about how it would turn what ballet typically is onto its head and open new avenues for her to explore.”

Wasn’t the man further away than that? Yuuri watched the featureless blur that was the fucker evolve into discernable features as the man approached.

“I just want to bring that to life for her.” The stranger was gripping a new pair of shoes now, he finally noticed, and looked at them blankly.

This was a dream. A long convoluted and ludicrous dream, worked up by his anxiety about the upcoming skating season.  
It had to be, there was no other explanation. 

Yuuri grunted as he was eased off the floor and pushed back into the wall, grimacing as the sudden elevation screwed with his blood pressure and making his vision swim. His fingers were tingling something fierce, the pressure in his chest seeming only to intensify by the second, and he numbly realized he was hyperventilating and really should stop.

That was made hard, though, as his would-be killer took his good foot and cradled it between his knees, gingerly slipping the new toe shoe on, began to tie the long ribbons up his leg.

The new toe shoe that was somehow equipped with a very large, sheathed, kitchen knife.

A knife.

Reality came back to Yuuri in a flash and he lunged for it. The stranger seemed to have expected that though and Yuuri found his leg gripped by two gross hot, humid thighs and a backhand whipping his face to the side.

His mind was filled with only one single thought and that was that Yuuri needed that knife, needed it more than he needed anything else. Suddenly he wasn’t hurting very much at all as his hands found the captor’s shirt and dragged him in with a hoarse yell.

Yuuri’s mind was rushing, ideas upon ideas stirred into a crazy froth. He punched the man in the throat and clawed at an eye. His fingernails hadn’t been clipped in some time and drew blood immediately.

The killer wheezed, momentarily stunned but it didn’t last long. Not nearly long enough by any stretch.

Things seem to slow down as the man surged forward, his face made of glinting teeth and wild, bulging eyes.  
And then everything was running by him too fast.  
They grappled in the dirt, Yuuri’s fists and nails a feral windmill of rage and adrenaline as they fought for the advantage. Grips were made and broken in a blink and the killer’s body was too heavy, too hot, too sweaty on top of him. Yuuri could feel the old man’s sweat and saliva spitting at him. It only served to piss him off more.

There was yelling, grunting and cussing, the sickening slap of slick flesh hitting slick flesh and bodies scrambling on dirt.  
A hand seized his wrist but Yuuri twisted out of it and launched his fist straight into the eye he’d already bloodied. His kidnapper fell back and Yuuri pushed it harder, yanking them into a roll with a snarl and a pop of his hip and thigh. His captured foot broke free.

Now Yuuri was on top and he took swift advantage of it, happily breaking the old man’s nose with a solid right hook. Blood gushed forth and Yuuri’s ears stung at the howl of enraged pain. He went in for another one with his left but there were hands clamping into his shoulders and Yuuri found himself heaved and flipped so quickly it made him dizzy.

His head smacked the floor hard and he yelled as starbursts lit up the backs of his eyelids, snatched them back open to find the murderer’s weight already on top of him. 

There was a length of chain in the man’s hands, a bloody and insane grin slitting open his face. Yuuri’s eyes widened.

His hand shot out and did catch chain but it did nothing to stop it. Instantly there was a massive pressure in Yuuri’s ears and eyes and he ripped at his hand hard, reefing at the stranglehold while his left shot out for the body on top of him.  
The fucker’s ugly face and shirt front were just out of reach. Yuuri bucked, writhing and groping for his attacker in an instinctual immediate attempt to throw him off but the man rode it out like some sort of sick professional.

The killer was smiling so wide that it was the only thing in his face Yuuri could see through the blur of distance and tears, grotesque in size. His teeth were yellow and Yuuri snarled in distaste as the man’s blood was shaken about by his struggles, bits of it landing hot on his face.

Yuuri wheezed for the air he still had, his passing out delayed by his inside grip on the thick garrote. Between i,t the tightness of the bodice, he knew it was inevitable. It was getting harder to struggle, he was tiring rapidly and the old man gunning for his death was well rested and well fed. 

Madman astride his hips knew it too, somehow drew the chain tighter as his smile twisted into an equally ugly grimace of effort, eyes about popping out of his head. 

They were watching him. Always fucking watching him and even through the burn of suffocation Yuuri was so sick of it. His free hand continued to grope about, there had to be something-

Yuuri’s fingers found loose dirt, curled around it and threw it into his attacker’s face. The extra sting and distraction let the chain slacken just enough for the dancer to somehow jerk out of it and nail the fucker hard in the groin. Completely free, Yuuri hacked spittle and carbon dioxide as he scrambled backwards.

His head was buzzing and the freak was lunging for him again, fingers curled like claws and already on top of him- 

Yuuri drew in his good leg and kicked.

The world stopped.

Yuuri sucked in oxygen in wide mouthed gasps, blinking up at the old man who’d for some reason stopped, his hands hanging loosely in the air. The man’s expression seemed to slacken until he looked just as confused as Yuuri felt. Redness started seeping from the pervert’s clenched teeth.

As one they turned their eyes down and Yuuri was met with a sight he couldn’t quite comprehend.

His foot was stuck in the man’s soft stomach, the cloth around it rapidly bleeding slick. Above him his captor uttered a throaty grunt and Yuuri blinked hard as bright droplets hit the exposed skin of his collarbone.  
Gaping, Yuuri turned his gaze back to the old man’s face and found the man looking back at him.

Staring at him. Always, always for the rest of his life, staring.

Something in Yuuri’s brain snapped. Terror, hate, powerlessness rocked him back into the present and Yuuri ground his teeth hard, jerking at his foot.

It wasn’t coming out but the freak made another garbled kind of sound and Yuuri felt sheer panic pull any reason right out of his head. His foot wasn’t coming out, it wasn’t

Coming

Out.

The young man jerked, lips pulled back tight against his teeth, eyes unseeingly large and jerked his leg again, again, entirely heedless of the cries and groans above him in his frenzy.  
Yuuri jerked again, twisted and then ripped.

The ensuing howl and scarlet spray shook Yuuri to the bone. He backpeddled hard, crawling and kicking himself away in a mad scramble to barely avoid the old man as he fell forward, tumbling gracelessly to the ground. 

He crumpled, the hands that had been ready to kill him made leathery and spotted by age. The remains of what hair he had left clung to his sweaty neck and face. He really was just an old man, wasn’t he?

A pathetic, pitiful, decrepit mess of an old man whose entrails had been scattered across the floor.

A hand gripped his ankle, the hold slipping somewhat against the slide of blood and Yuuri gasped shrilly. 

The geriatric’s head tilted up by inches and he sputtered a weak cough, brows pressing upward into a somewhat desperate expression.

“Nyet...Lilia, ne idut…”

Frozen, Yuuri didn’t go.

It didn’t take a lot of time until his breathing stopped. A second after that, his eyes went empty.

‘So that’s what it means,” Yuuri thought to himself. ‘For the light to go out of somebody’s eyes.’

Feeling a rather startling clarity, a sort of sideways nothing of emotion, Yuuri gave his ankle a wiggle and watched as the hand gripping it limply slid off. Carefully the man drew his foot in the rest of the way, eyeballing the corpse warily. 

The old man didn’t move. Yuuri turned his attention to his foot.

His hands were steady as he began to unlace the long straps, bemoaning the loss of what was no doubt a very expensive shoe, and absently lifted his head to squint around.

The sheath was lying some six or so feet away, or he was pretty sure that was it. When it had come off Yuuri really had no idea.

He hadn’t even noticed.

The massive blade glinted threateningly as Yuuri gingerly slid his foot from the shoe, and he paused to give it a thoughtful look. He had an idea of what the man’s wife had been thinking with this and had to admit it would have been impressive if she’d managed to execute it. The sheer strength and balance it would have taken…

Yuuri shook his head, hair tickling back and forth across his shoulders and back. Then again he was pretty certain who the wife in question was.

Minako had idolized Lilia Baronovskaya. Yuuri could remember comforting her awkwardly when news of what had happened hit Japan.

Which meant the old man in front of him was Yakov Feltsman-Baronovskaya, or he’d used to be anyway. 

Yuuri eyed the corpse and calmly set the shoe aside, pulling himself forward with a mild scowl at the ache that was beginning to resettle in his muscles and bones. God, he was all over in hurt all over again Yuuri was sure the fight hadn’t left a single millimetre of him untouched.

He reached out, slipping his hands into the pockets at Yakov’s hips and finding nothing, turned the pile of dead weight over with a hard grunt. Pushing aside the mass of-  
Yuuri blanked, found nothing in the jacket pockets either but unzipping it revealed a chain, still tucked into the collar of the old man’s shirt. 

A handsome men’s wedding ring, quite wide, was what he found. Yuuri gave the thin chain a mildly desperate look and dropped it, recommencing his search with clumsy hands. He searched through the man’s pockets again, tugged up his pant legs, ripped off his shoes and the socks after that.  
The key, Yuuri thought as he ransacked the body. Where was the goddamn motherfucking forsaken key?!

When Yuuri found it attached to a leather cord about a cooling wrist he sagged with a whimper of relief. Pulling it off he turned his attention to his shackles, quickly unlocking one and upon turning to the other, hesitated.

The glint of the thin metal was visible, mostly, through the grossly swollen flesh and Yuuri swallowed hard, remembering how it had felt when Yakov had just taken off his shoe.

Well. He could hang out with the corpse or he could unlock the manacle. Yuuri took a shivering breath, bracing himself with a wince as he leaned over.

It was just as bad, if not worse. No, the man thought as he collapsed with a hoarse wail, it was worse. Being banged about in the struggle hadn’t helped matters and Yuuri faced that reality with a shudder, a wheeze, and a full body heave that sprayed his stomach onto the dirt.

Campbells Chunky didn’t taste very good coming up either.

Quaking, Yuuri crawled away from the mess and stiffly dropped onto his front, taking a moment to gather his erratic breath. His eyes fluttered closed.

He wanted to sleep, Yuuri realized. So damn bad.

He pushed himself onto his forearms, onto his hands and knees, and began to crawl. This was not made any easier by the gowns long skirt.

Later, Yuuri wouldn’t remember much of anything about the escape, wouldn’t be able to guess how he’d managed it.

Beaten, starved and more exhausted than he thought was even possible, Yuuri dragged himself forward inch by agonizingly slow inch. His arms went out from under him several times, leaving him to crash to the ground but the continued effort was worth it the moment the staircase came into view.

Licking his lips Yuuri panted up at them, eyes a bare half mast. They were fuzzy with distance but by God they were there and the figure skater redoubled his efforts until he was pulling his battered self up onto them, teeth grit in desperation.

One step, one breath, one blink at a time and eventually he was pushing weakly at a hatch in the floor. 

The length of wood crashed to the side.

His head was pounding. He was ready to pass out.

It didn’t matter. Yuuri stumbled momentarily on the excess fabric of the gown, knee slipping down hard and throwing his chest into the side of the hole and for a moment he was terrified that he was going to slip back down. If he did-

Yuuri didn’t know if he’d be able to get back up again.

He didn’t.

“Come on Katsuki,” Yuuri slurred and shifted to force his body gracelessly onto the tiled floor of the outside.

His front smacked roughly against the tiles. Yuuri gasped, panted and turned himself back up on arms he couldn’t quite feel anymore.  
His head hung, he couldn’t lift it.  
“Come on,” He whispered to himself in a voice so rough and thin it didn’t sound like his. “You can do this...you can...come on...” 

Along the way somewhere he’d apparently managed to pull himself to his feet. Yuuri couldn’t remember when, shuffled forward against a wall anyway. His legs were sagging.

Yuuri outright refused to let his body crumple. He rejected the very notion. He would not.

And then there was a door. He must have blanked out because he couldn’t quite figure out where it had come from but his fingers still managed to find the knob, twist, shove.

Yuuri was greeted with a rush of sweet cold air, a voice and then arms he couldn’t remember falling into.

The face of Viktor Nikiforov was peering down at him. Short haired, older, but definitely him. He was in the arms of his idol and his instantly recognizable silver tresses formed a blurry, shining halo against the black of everything else.

And then he was gone, leaving a hole of dark above him. Yuuri could still feel the wet cold of grass though, a soft breeze, a stirring of fresh air. It was magnificent.

‘I must have died,’ Yuuri thought to himself, wheezing slowly and letting his eyes drop shut.

There were fewer better places to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel bad that i didnt like, manage to make it less obvious but yall r just so smart apparently. smart jerkfaces who didn't let me even tryyyy to throw you off. THATS WHAT I GET for mentioning yakov twice within two lines of each other cus thats when yall started getting it.  
> -snaps fingers- foreshadowed too hard. lesson for next time!
> 
> still an epilogue to come dont worry!!! hopefully thatll be up tomorrow! also hopefully the rest of yall questions will be answered, i hope it satisfies you all   
> i hope the actiony bits were ok im not very good at/used to writing that kinda dealio


	8. Dark blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg here it is  
> the epi that i had to basically rewrite the entirety of  
> I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT  
> THANK Y'ALL SO MUCH FOR STICKING THIS OUT WITH ME OMGOSH YOU'RE AMAZING  
> I'm so happy i got to enjoy this with all of you, tytytytyty

They don’t need to amputate his leg but it’s a near thing.

He’d fractured one of the small bones in his ankle, an injury very likely sustained at the very beginning of the debacle. It had only been exacerbated by his not being allowed to heal, but it hadn’t been the worst of it.  
The combination of swelling, a tight shoe and an unforgiving metal cuff was what had nearly cost him his leg. What circulation the area had managed to get was just enough to keep the limb from dying.  
Another couple days and that wouldn’t have been the case. Yuuri thinks of the swarm of sensation he’d felt when the toe shoe and cuff had come off and groggily mentions it to his doctor.

A sign that it hadn’t quite died on him just yet. If he’d felt nothing, Yuuri was told, well. The man tells him it’s a bit of a miracle and looks just as relieved as he is.

As it is, Yuuri’s left leg is missing a sizeable chunk up the side and is presently a mess of skin grafts, bandages, stitches and staples.

And Yuuri can’t help but wonder who the others that had gone before him had managed. Was that why they’d all died? Because they couldn’t use their injured leg anymore and so couldn’t dance? He doesn’t know, he’s not sure he wants to know, and Yuuri can’t help but feel again that he’s lucky.

He’ll never skate competitively again, the doctor tells him. There’s still too much nerve damage and as it is he’s going to need months of phsyical rehabilitation before he can walk properly again.  
But he’s lucky and he’s alive.

Somehow, where so many others had died, Yuuri is alive. 

He doesn’t know what to think about this.

Otherwise, Yuuri has a cracked rib, a couple broken fingers, a chunk out of his tongue and a cut along his lip that needs stitches. There is also a moderate concussion that seriously fragments his memory and makes the nurse ask him weird questions every time they see each other, and won’t let him keep down much else other than jello for a bit.

This isn’t counting the extensive bruising and the small cuts he’d earned himself in the first, and the last, fight.  
He’s also down about twenty pounds, or nine kilograms, but that’s neither here nor there.

It takes three days for the hospital to allow visitors to see him.  
The police have apparently been knocking the hospital doors down in an effort to question him so they’re the first in line.  
It frustrates them, he knows, when he can’t give them a play by play.  
Most of what he can recollect is hazy and more a tangle of emotions and thoughts than sights and sounds. 

It’s to be expected. Between the head injury, the drugs, the starvation and the withdrawals he’d suffered, says the doctor who refuses to leave while he’s questioned, it’s surprising he can remember as much as he does.

The doctor is very fond of him. Apparently he’d been something of a fan and isn’t pleased either that Yuuri’s career is effectively done.

Yuuri very carefully doesn’t mention that he still feels the odd give and rip of muscle, organs and flesh under his foot, or that he knows what intestines feel like.

He knows he killed a man.  
That, he remembers painfully well.

Said man had apparently been a retired cop and Yuuri had been absolutely terrified that he was going to be thrown right back into chains because of it. Cops took care of cops after all, everybody knew it and in the racial hodgepot of America it was even more prevalent.

But, even though there was still grief and the kind of stunned surprise one wore when suckerpunched out of the blue in the officer’s expressions, he wouldn’t be charged. Of course not.

The plainclothes detective who tells him this is pretty, redhaired, gentle and completely sympathetic.  
Yuuri’s grateful that the shade of her hair leans more toward the rust of old blood instead of the painfully vivid hue of fresh.

She also speaks with a bit of a Russian accent. For some reason it unnerves him.

“You were in a life or death situation, Mr. Katsuki. Nobody on earth could put you away for it.” Her name is Mila Babicheva and her hand is soft when it touches his arm.  
“We’re going to miss him, but apparently he wasn’t the man we thought he was. Nobody blames you for what you did, I promise.”

Yuuri is all out of tears to give, musters a twitch of a smile that’s probably exactly as disbelieving as he feels.

He killed Yakov Feltsman-Baronovskaya. Killed the old man terribly and painfully.

The dancer feels more guilt at the expansive nothingness of emotion that thought gives him instead of the murder itself, experiences shame on an intellectual level alone.  
Yuuri had killed a man and doesn’t feel anything about it, and it scares him.

Mila leaves and in her place come his parents, looking haggard, untidy and pale. They stare at each other and Yuuri was wrong because he’s crying, tears hot and heavy, and reaching a limp hand for them.

His mother’s expression crumples. His father looks grey with devastation. They’re next to him in an instant, gathering him up like he’s ten years old.

Yuuri sobs into his mother’s shoulder and is pretty sure she’s shaking just as hard as he is, and his father’s hand sweeps a trembling hand comfortingly about his head. They’re solid and soft and warm, and they smell like home.

The reality that Yuuri free is what comes with the arrival of Hiroko and Toshiya Katsuki. Somehow he hadn’t felt it until now. 

Yuuri is too exhausted by the new fit of emotions sweltering the room and doesn’t manage to stay awake for long but he falls asleep knowing that he’s safe now, and it makes all the difference. 

When he wakes up it’s with the painful-slow creep of awareness that he’s grown to hate. Yuuri panics, hard, and screams when he’s pushed back by a set of unfamiliar hands. He lashes out, his fists finding soft meat, wails when he’s grabbed and pushed back harder.

He needs to be sedated.

He also manages to tear out his IV, which makes said sedation somewhat more difficult but all the same the nurses manage it and the young man grows still, chest heaving as his emotions rapidly evanesce.  
Yuuri pants, blinks up at the ceiling passed the overhang of unfamiliar faces, and goes somewhere even further away than the painkillers had already driven him to. He doesn’t even notice slipping into sleep.

The entire process, from the start of the panic attack to the arrival of a nurse, and then more nurses thereafter to hold him down so he won’t hurt himself or anybody else, to the sedation takes only about three minutes.

Peering in through a window, Viktor grimaces sadly and bites back at the itch in his eyes.  
That, he reflects, had not been easy to watch.  
The additional men and women disperse, looking quietly unruffled though two of them are a bit stiff and one has a bloody nose. Apparently, Yuuri had a mean left hook.

“I don’t know what you expected,” Mila says quietly beside him, her striking face pulled into an expression of sympathy. “He’s been deeply traumatized.”

Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily, and gusts out a sigh.

“Yes,’ He says as he looks back into the room. Yuuri is sleeping now, looking calm and serene. “I know.”

As if that was supposed to make him feel any better about the whole thing. Viktor slips his hands into his pockets, watching the distant rise and fall of Yuuri’s chest, the heart and respiratory rates on the monitor next to him, and takes comfort that while Yuuri may be traumatized, he’s alive.

Somehow, he’s alive.

Viktor still doesn’t know how Yuuri had managed to get to the door.  
Chain to the stairs was a good forty or so feet, and then fifteen steep stairs, and then a kitchen, a dining room, a hallway and a livingroom. The younger skater’s will to survive was just incredible.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget seeing Yuuri in that backlit doorway, ghostly and broken but still standing tall.

Granted that had probably been more thanks to the corset than anything else.

And now, Yuuri gets to recover in the warm length of a hospital bed and, hopefully soon, his own home. It was a reward that was more than deserved.

“How was he when you spoke to him? By the way.” Viktor asks, studying the younger man’s sleeping face. It is at once odd and good to see the skater without the long tattered extensions Yakov had glued onto him. Yuuri’s own natural hair is just a vision Viktor prefers.

It’s like peeling off a mask to see the truth of what lay underneath, a soft whispered ‘There you are’. Viktor still doesn’t know what had motivated the depth of expression in the last polaroid but he has a feeling Yuuri will be relieved to see himself unchanged, his appearance left up to his own decisions.

“Exhausted. Pretty out of it, they’ve got him on an impressive cocktail of medications. Painkillers, sedatives, and I guess they’re slowly working him back onto the zoloft.” Mila shrugs in the corner of his eye. “Still overwhelmed I’d guess, he wasn’t really emoting properly, but better than he could be, all things considered.”

It had been Mila and Dan who’d shown up first, because of course it had been and then another squad car and shortly after that, an ambulance. Yuuri had been loaded and taken away in a wail of sound and light.

Viktor had stayed, he hadn’t had much of a choice, and debriefed Dan while Mila and two other officers began to case the house, a separate other two doing a brief swing of the perimeter.

With the train of bloody footprints Yuuri had left, finding the basement had been simple. The first assumption was that said blood belonged to the man in question but that was quickly corrected when they found Yakov.

Mila had been very grim indeed when she’d radioed for another ambulance.

Viktor had needed to see. Surprisingly, Dan agreed, and Viktor had been shown into the basement.

The sight was gruesome. 

While nowhere near the over exaggerated spray of Kill Bill, the blood spat over the dirt floor arced long. Yakov lay in another larger pool of it where he’d bled out. The gut wound that had done the old man in was grisly, his midsection very nearly ripped in two, with all the cooling entrails scattered about that one might expect.

It hurt. Just the night before, Yakov had been warm and vivid.  
Had Viktor known that Yakov would be dead the very next evening he never would have left.

Not even a foot away was the knife that had done it. Viktor remembered staring incredulously at the weaponized toe shoe, satin soaked through at the tip and spattered thickly along the rest. 

There was a sheath a little ways away but given the struggle that imprinted the dirt and dust, it had come off somewhere during. Really, Viktor guiltily thought, if Yakov was equipping his victims with that kind of thing it was a sick sort of miracle that he’d managed to go on this long.

The man had wanted things to end, but Viktor was quite certain Yakov hadn’t meant like this.

Days later and Viktor still didn’t know how to think or feel. The investigation was being wrapped up now without him and it left Viktor feeling as though he was floating loose in the worst way.

“The consulate is going to subsidize his hospital costs, right?”

“Mhm. A pretty big chunk of it I think, if not all of it. They’re also going to cover a portion of his therapy, if he chooses to undergo it.”

Viktor blinked and glanced to the side, slightly confused. “I thought Japan had universal healthcare?”

“They do but clinical psychology isn’t covered. Psychiatrists are though.” Mila’s shoulders dropped and the woman sighed a long breath at the ceiling. “Fuck me, the past two weeks have sucked. So how did it go with Dan?”

Viktor couldn’t help but chuckle, giving his cheek a scratch as he flashbacked to the very loud, very frightening tongue lashing he’d gotten.

“Ah, well. I’m suspended for four weeks now instead of two.” He pulled back his bangs, sheepish and chagrined but not feeling too guilty about things, honestly. “And I owe the station a few pizzas and the costs of repairing the GPS I wrecked. I still need to figure out something to apologize to Archie and Dick with about, you know. The whole…”

“Attacking them completely unprovoked?” Mila’s mouth twisted sideways into a smirk. “You know you could have just explained the situation to them right? Sure you would’ve been stuck at the hotel but everything would’ve panned out about the same.”

Viktor did not remind Mila that he felt personally responsible for Yuuri’s safety.  
Hell, he was responsible for the entire murder spree.  
If he had only guessed instead of trusting Yakov on blind faith, those people wouldn’t have died. Twelve people wouldn’t be dead, and Yuuri wouldn’t be laid up in a hospital bed, pale and bruised and sedated.  
And maybe Yakov would be alive instead of a bisected corpse cooling in a morgue.

Instead, Viktor shrugged, his smile growing a little stiff.

“Well, after everything that had happened I wasn’t really thinking properly by that point.”

“Yeah, that’s probably why you haven’t been fired.”

Viktor snorted wryly. Yes that was a bit of a miracle, wasn’t it?

“How did you guys get there so quickly anyway?” The man asked, quirking a brow at the young woman. “It’s like, an hour and a half from the precinct, were you already on route to something?”

Mila smirked just a little bit. “There’s this thing called ‘find my iPhone’ you know. You added me to the family thing when we started working together, said you misplaced it too often. I guess you forgot, lucky me.”

The woman snickered, light and smug.

Oh. Oops.

“Well, like I said, wasn’t quite thinking.” Viktor coughed into his fist, a little embarrassed by the ridiculously simple thing he’d somehow managed to overlook. Maybe he should go Android in the future.

Silence opened between them, bringing the background furor of the hospital to the fore. They seemed to just watch the sleeping man for a good minute, each of their thoughts heavy and many. Eventually Mila stirred in his periphery, pulling away from the observation window and turning to walk away. Viktor gave the dancer who had invaded him so spectacularly a last look, then followed.

Mila’s hands were in the pockets of her dark slacks, the burnished ochre of her knee length coat a loose swathe of fabric that nearly overwhelmed her. Usually the redhead wore fitted jackets. It was strange to see her in something that wasn’t.

Viktor pulled his eyes away from his partner, giving his mild concerns for the woman’s mental state to the back of his mind. At the end of the day, regardless of the guileless wide eyed sympathy she gave people on the job, Mila was just as tough as the nails she probably ate for breakfast.  
She’d get through it just fine.

Viktor wasn’t sure he could say the same about himself.

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” 

He paused, confused. “Sorry?”

“The whole thing with Yakov.” She looked at him over her shoulder, blue eyes vivid against the sterility of the hospital hallway. “That’s not your fault. You weren’t wrong to trust him, Viktor, and whatever bullshit going through his head had nothing to do with you.”

The platinum haired detective blinked and dropped his suddenly itching eyes to the floor.

“It doesn’t feel that way.” 

“Yeah, well…” They finally got to the elevators and picking at random, Mila jammed her thumb into the button. “Maybe you should start thinking more with your head instead of your heart for once. It’s made you really, really stupid.”

Viktor surprised himself by coughing out a chuckle. He brushed at the itch on the corner of his eye, looked up at the smaller woman with a shake of his head.

“Yeah,” The elevator dinged and the doors opened, spilling a small wave of people. They stepped in. “You’re right, maybe I should.”

What was that his old coach had said? Viktor thought back as the doors closed and the elevator lurched, began it’s descent.

Something like, that all figure skaters had glass hearts. 

Viktor supposed his had just never left.

“So we’ve been going through his stuff,” Mila began to explain. “He’s left a lot of diaries for us to look at. All of them in English. Did you know his wife wore contact lenses? I always thought the green was a little too bright. I guess her eyes were brown underneath.”

“Well, that answers that question at least.” Viktor said without feeling.

No, he hadn’t known. He didn’t care too much either. Mila fell quiet and Viktor returned the favour.

It was just them in the elevator, the silence stretching while the display of numbers flickered and flashed. Viktor found himself lulled into a daze by the soft whir of cables and engines, his mind going blessedly blank for the first time in a long while.

So when Mila cleared her throat and reached out to touch his arm it was with a mile startle that he looked over at her, finding her looking nervous.

“Look...Viktor, do you think you’ll be coming back after your suspension is done?”

Well. That was the question wasn’t it? Viktor eyed the smaller woman, the memories of his emotional and mental exhaustion pushing at him needily.  
He’d thought he needed a vacation but now with the question posed to him so bluntly…

Could he really continue in this work, knowing what he did about the man who’d taken him on? Yakov had taught him everything, had been the stolid foundation which Viktor had built his career on, had been the compass that guided Viktor even after he’d left.

So could Viktor keep up in this field, when everything he’d built it on was a lie?

“I don’t know.” Was all he finally said.

The non-answer was as good as an affirmative. The platinum haired man could feel the weight of it settle in his bones, somehow leaving him lighter and emptier. He had a handful of weeks to figure things out before his suspension was up. Viktor would have an answer for sure by then.

“Right…” Mila blinked, her eyes filmy. Viktor carefully didn’t pay it much attention.  
The redhead drew in a hard breath. “Well. That said, we’re not really supposed to do this but Dan and I thought you…”

She dug a hand into the inside pocket of her uncommonly loose jacket and withdrew a white envelope, plain save for Viktor’s name.

“We thought you deserved to read this.”

Viktor felt his breath stall in his chest, took the envelope with fingers he was surprised wouldn’t shake. Shutting his eyes tight he pushed it into his own pocket and pulled his partner and friend into a one armed embrace.  
Mila came easily, her arm an immediate weight around his waist, and Viktor pushed his nose into her hair with a loose, quivery sigh.

“Thank you Mila.” He whispered, their mother tongue coming easy and freely. “Thank you, for everything.”

The redhead nodded, sternly silent with the effort to keep her composure, and squeezed him hard.  
The elevator doors yawned open with a chime. When they stepped out of the lift they didn’t separate, remaining arm in arm until the cold autumn air pulled them each their own ways. 

It felt like goodbye.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a loud, overjoyed howl.  
Yuuri startled, head whipping up from the pages of the light novel he’d been reading and found the source immediately, largely because it was already on top of and clinging to him.

Phichit, it seemed, had forgotten about Yuuri’s tender rib cage.

The air rushed out of him in an audible woof and Yuuri winced automatically. The pain was a distant thing thanks to the meds that were being pumped into his system but he was still stiff and conservative with any movement.

That didn’t matter though. Yuuri hugged Phichit as tight as he could, doing his best to comfort the sobbing teenager wailing into his shoulder.

Looking to the side he found Celestino, leaning down to pick up the book that had gone flying upon the tackle hug, and Angelica who was already beginning to lay into Phichit for being so rough. The teen lifted his head to look at the woman with soggy eyed confusion before what she was saying sank in and immediately the boy jumped back, horrified.

“Oh no, oh no, I’m so sorry, did I hurt you?” His hands were hesitating in the air, at once wanting to check on him but not wanting to cause any harm.

Yuuri breathed out a raspy chuckle and reached out to take one of them, clasping it gently.

“You’re fine, it’s fine. I can’t...actually really feel anything right now. Painkillers and all.”

And also a mild sedative, that had been an immediate addition after the panic attack. He thought it was probably a day ago but he wasn’t entirely sure. His sense of time was still off and the brain numbing opioids didn’t help.

He was pretty sure morphine was an opioid anyway. 

It was morphine he was being given, right?

Realizing he’d kind of dazed out, Yuuri blinked at Phichit. The boy was looking unsure, the handsome brown of his skin a kind of strange, washed out grey. Seeking to reassure the younger boy, Yuuri smiled.

“Sorry. I’m a bit, uh, loopy right now.”

“It’s fine dear. Here, Hiroko made you something to eat, get some real food into you.” Angelica presented a plastic bag to him and Yuuri dropped Phichit’s hand to take it, peeking inside to find covered tupperware.

Katsudon. Of course. Yuuri smiled fondly, thinking he’d need to remember to thank his mom the next time she and his dad dropped by, probably later today.

“Thanks.” He turned his smile to Angelica.  
Her eyes were warm and kind, but they were intent. On him.  
Always on him.

Yuuri repressed a shiver, swallowing hard and peeled the lid off the bowl. There was a fork which he grabbed, sinking it into the fried pork.

“How is everything?” Yuuri asked before stuffing his mouth, chewing carefully and peering over at the people he’d come to think of as almost a second family.

“Busy. Everyone’s asking about you at the club, I think they’re working on some sort of get well present for you.” Celestino dropped into one of the two chairs, the other occupied by his wife. “Aside from all the cards and flowers.”

Said cards and flowers very nearly overwhelmed the small bedside table the room had been fitted with. Yuuri thought they looked almost like a wash of watercolours, painfully bright against all the white.

Phichit’s weight was warm beside him. Yuuri’s pinky was winding through the younger man’s before he’d processed that he was moving at all.

“We’ve had to deal with a few reporters, that was a pain, but mostly we’ve just been…” Celestino paused.

“Recovering.” Phichit finished for their coach and regarded Yuuri with a shaky grin. The expression wobbled and the teen sniffled. “We-we were so scared for you, Yuuri. We were so scared...”

The way Phichit’s face crumples stirs Yuuri’s heart and he sets aside the bowl, opening his arms to the youth. Phichit is there immediately, a shuddering mess of wet emotion, and Yuuri tucks the head of dark hair under his chin.

Angelica reaches out to touch Celestino’s wrist, a silent signal, and the man nods. 

“We’re going to get some coffee.” The woman says and ushers her husband out the room, leaving Yuuri and Phichit to their privacy.

Yuuri closes his eyes with a soft gust of air and just lets the teenager shake loose the stress he’d been under.  
It was funny, the dancer thought, he’d been so wrapped up in everything in front of him that he’d almost forgotten the people he had who cared for him. Distantly they were constants, but only distantly, a tiny speck of a thought at the back of Yuuri’s mind.

Maybe his loved ones hadn’t personally experienced what Yuuri had been through, but they’d been going through their own special hell just the same.

Petting Phichit’s head is kind of awkward with two of his fingers in a splint but the motion is automatic, rhythmic, and Yuuri falls into the clouds of his mind, regarding the ceiling with eyes that are far away. How much time slips by while Phichit cries himself out, he can’t guess, but eventually the teen is pulling away with a sniff.

Yuuri lets him, worry pinging at him as Phichit huffs a couple of shaky breaths while wiping his eyes. Concerned still he tilts his head, brows quirking inquiringly and Phichit shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” The teen mumbles, straightening his snapback and hunching over tiredly. “It’s you who should be crying on me, not me crying on you. I didn’t...I can’t even imagine what you went through but-”

“Hey.” Yuuri interrupts, touching the boy’s arm. “You don’t need to be sorry. You’ve been through a pretty tough time too, you know.”

Phichit gives him a skeptical, significant look. Yuuri snorts and shakes his head. “Don’t…”

It’s hard to find what he wants to say. It’s harder to translate it into their mutual language of English. Yuuri wets his lips with a tongue thats sore, loose and clumsy, pausing. The words come slow.

“Don’t...downplay how you’re hurt, just because I’m hurt too. . What you feel is valid, and you’re allowed to feel it. You’re allowed. It’s-It’s not a competition Phichit”

He hopes his smile is as warm and comforting as he can manage, squeezes Phichit’s arm before letting his hand drop.  
It still took so much effort just to move and Yuuri desperately envies his past self’s ability to do anything at all completely thoughtless. Even brushing his own teeth tires him out and getting to the bathroom is a chore that requires two nurses to help him into the wheelchair, cold and mocking that stays on the other side of his bed.

Phichit seems to mull over Yuuri’s words for a bit, his dark eyes on his feet, and then nods.

“I’m picking up what you’re dropping I think.” He says, and Yuuri is rewarded with a tiny genuine grin that doesn’t tremble at all.

“What?” Yuuri sputters in confusion with a laugh. “What does that even mean?”

He thinks he gets the gist of it though.

His obvious incredulity sparks Phichit’s laughter as well and they rapidly devolve into giggles, giddy by the surplus of intense emotion, and even though it hurts a bit it feels good.

It feels good to laugh with somebody.

“So,” Yuuri pants out once they’ve calmed down. He’s still fighting back his chuckles, the haze making the action a little too easy, is still smiling widely.

He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore.  
He needs something normal.  
“How’s school? You’ve been going right?”

“Are you kidding me? As if I could!” Phichit scoffs and leans back on his hands. “Though...I’m going to have a lot of homework to catch up on.”

The boy grimaces and though Yuuri hears a knock, hears the door open, he ignores Celestino and Angelica for the moment.

“As if that kind of cramming isn’t something you’re used to. Ask for extensions, you’ll be fine.”

“Excuse me,” Speaks an unfamiliar voice from the doorway. “But is this a bad time?”

Yuuri’s eyes swing over. They promptly widen.

The man who’s standing in the doorway is slender and tall, his expression tired. One long fingered hand is still resting hesitantly on the doorknob, the other almost invisible under a massive bouquet of blue roses which stand out hard against the gentle gray of a long overcoat, the darker blue of a loose knit scarf.

Everything at once seems brighter and smaller. Yuuri’s world is tunnelvisioned, locked on a pair of startling arctic blue eyes.

When he was silly and small, Yuuri had used to whimsically think that Viktor Nikiforov was made in shades of ice. Looking at the stunning man in the real, he found his eight year old self’s description lacking.

Viktor Nikiforov really was unfairly, despicably gorgeous. Taller, broader and older he was only moreso.

Yuuri felt a finger poke into his stomach and blinked back to life, shaking his head gingerly and reaching up to rub at his eyes beneath the lense of his glasses. Phichit was giving him a Look again, and now Viktor was standing next to them. Yuuri belatedly realized they’d been talking and he’d been staring like a creep.

He was allowed to be dumbstruck though, damnit. It wasn’t every day ones lifelong idol just strolls into one’s room.

“I-I’m sorry.” Yuuri stammered and lifted a hand to hide his beaten ugly face under. Even against the glaze of trauma and medication he managed to feel embarrassed. 

“Were you listening to me at all?” Phichit says somewhere in the background. “I said this is the guy who’s been looking for you. He’s a detective or something.”

‘Or something’. Yuuri gave the younger boy a wild eyed look beneath his hand.

Above them, Viktor cleared his throat and sets down the vase on the already overflowing side table. Against the colourful hues of pink and yellow and orange, the blue of the roses is all the more vibrant and earth shaking.

“Well, I’m glad I’m finally able to meet you properly, Mr. Katsuki.”

Viktor reached out for a handshake with a smile that makes his eyes shine in a way that turns his handsome face even more stunning. The man could sink ships with that look, Yuuri thought dazedly.

He reached out, but hesitated. Hovering just in front of Viktor’s flawless hand, Yuuri’s, bruised and bandaged and taped,looks filthy in comparison.

Yuuri clasps their hands and shakes with the firmness that American’s consider polite. He’s scared he’ll leave a stain.

“Uhm, same.” Yuuri squeaked. “It’s a pleasure, uh...Detective Nikiforov.”

And wow didn’t that just roll off the tongue strangely. His idol’s hand is gentle.

“Thank you for…” 

Cold new air, pain, a pair of steady arms and the heat of a solid chest. A voice, professional but frantic, telling him to stay awake. A halo of silver hair.

Yuuri had almost forgotten.

The sensation welling in his chest is indescribable, warm but uncomfortable and heavy. When Yuuri draws in a careful breath it rattles strangely in his lungs.

“Thank you for everything.” He finishes in a whisper, the weight of whatever he’s feeling hot in his eyes.

Maybe Yuuri was imagining the soft look of understanding that fluttered across the detective’s face, and the heart breaking warmth in his smile, or maybe he wasn’t, and the way Viktor seems to comfortingly stroke his hand before releasing it.  
Yuuri’s not sure if he’s imagining it but it makes his heart thud all the same.

“Oh, you know each other!” 

The spell pops. 

Next to Yuuri’s thighs Phichit is leaning in, dark eyes shooting rapidly between them with the biggest shit eating grin Yuuri had seen on the teenager’s face to date. The boy’s obliviousness was hurting Yuuri’s brain, and the ache is worth it as he reaches out to knock his roommate’s hat right off his head.

“Don’t you know who that is?!” Yuuri hissed through his teeth. “That’s The Viktor Nikivorov! You know, the guy who won a ridiculous amount of medals in junior figure skating and was set to do the same in seniors before he had to retire?”

He’d made his roommate watch Viktor’s routines almost as much as Phichit made Yuuri watch The King and the Skater. How Phichit was unable to recognize the man in front of them was mind-boggling.

“Oh.” Phichit blinked and looked up at the silver haired man in question.

For his part, Viktor was standing quite patiently while he watched the byplay, a tickle of amusement crinkling his eyes.

“The guy you have a poster of on your door?” 

The teenager looked to Yuuri for confirmation and Yuuri sighed, laying back against the pillows with a wince. It’s getting painful to move, all the bouncing around must have aggravated his everything. He still nods.

“Well that’s a pretty awesome coincidence!” Phichit paused and blanched. “N-Not that it’s awesome that you got-uhm-that you were-”

“Go away, Phichit.”

“I’m gone.”

The door shuts behind the teenager.  
Above him, a musical and throaty chuckle greets Yuuri’s ears warmly before there’s a squeak of a pulled out chair.  
Opening his heavy, sandy eyes, Yuuri finds Viktor looking amused, sitting back comfortably. Closer it’s easier to see the faint violet bruises that stain the apparently-a-detective’s under eyes and there’s a dip in his cheeks that’s telling.  
All of it just somehow makes the man more beautiful.

“I thought you two had a good relationship.” Viktor’s voice is just as dramatic as the rest of him, thinks Yuuri, a pleasant tenor. “But it’s nice to see it. You act like brothers.”

“He kind of feels like one.” Yuuri’s voice is a husky slur and it makes him feel like dirt.

This man had seen Yuuri at his weakest moment. He’d seen the debased and degraded captive, seen Yuuri perverted and stolen, seen the gaping maw of nothing roaring in his head that had taken him over after he’d killed a living, breathing human being.

So how was it that Viktor is able to smile at Yuuri like Yuuri is worth anything at all?

“The DPD pooled together the money for the bouquet.” Viktor nodded to the mass of flora.

His tired expression seems to crack.

“Given that the man who did this to you was one of ours, we felt it was only appropriate. It’s not enough but we hope you accept our apology. We-” There’s the ghost of a shadow that’s darkening Viktor’s smile, makes Yuuri’s stomach clench uncomfortably. “I am...more sorry than I can properly express.”

The flash of light shining through sterling hair arrests Yuuri’s attention for a second. The man is closer now, he notices as Viktor takes the hand closest to him between the both of his, lifting it like it’s something precious and fragile.

Viktor’s hands are still warm, human and calloused and it’s almost as if he’s speaking in twos that Yuuri can barely catch onto. It confuses and alarms him, as much as he can manage, and Yuuri cranes his head to see the man better.  
“Sir?” Yuuri’s voice is an ungraceful croak.

“I failed you.” Why is it that Viktor’s begging him with his eyes? The older man’s voice is cracking just like his face is, coming out stormy and slow.

“Yuuri, I failed you and I’m so sorry. He-Yakov...used to be my partner and if I’d figured everything out sooner none of this would have happened. You wouldn’t have had to-You didn’t have to go through that.”

The dual grip on his hands is tightening. It makes his skin ache. Yuuri feels the world begin to slip sideways.

Viktor drops his gaze and he looks so tired and ragged, sad and old. The man licks his lip and continues. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness Yuuri. I just need you to know how sorry I am that this happened.”

There’s an entire soul being laid open in front of him but Yuuri’s brain is dragging, slow to catch up.  
Viktor’s words are spinning triplicate, difficult to catch onto, and the nothing at the left is catching up to him again. It makes it harder to think, and Yuuri still doesn’t understand but Viktor is pleading at him with a face that looks so hurt it may as well be an open wound.  
He needs to say something.

“I don’t deserve yours either,” Is what Yuuri finds himself offering in return, his lips feeling numb.

The room fills with the steady beeping of machinery, the hum of the lights overhead, the faintest buzz of electric power and the forever-noise of the constant commotion that was the rest of the hospital. There’s nothing between them now except that, just heavy eyes looking at each other and silence.

Viktor’s jaw begins to work open, a look of bewilderment pushing his brows together. He pauses then, sighs and the glint of his lashes slide closed. Yuuri’s hand is lifted higher, clasped like a prayer and it’s so curious and warm and dizzying that Yuuri thinks he has to be dreaming.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Viktor mutters throatily, forehead coming to rest against the mess of their hands.

The veins in the other man’s hands are the briefest shade of blue, contrasting with the rosier touch to knuckles and the snowy white of tendons, the fleshy and cloudy pale touch of nails and the colours spin in Yuuri’s head, a cocktail of a vision that’s sense is eluding him.  
Too l  
Yuuri wonders why his mind is pulling everything into strange combinations. The way of thinking is unfamiliar and sometimes Yuuri can squint passed it to the present but this is so surreal it’s hard to see through the slant.

His lips feel chapped when Yuuri licks them. The stitches feel strange on his tongue. It doesn’t take Yuuri too long to twitch his fingers to life, shifting the grip of their hands until he’s returning the hold and he squeezes Viktor’s palm tight. He blinks at the jumble and over it, Viktor is watching him.  
Funny. When it’s Viktor, it doesn’t feel like a threat.

Yuuri stares back and whispers. “Then neither do you.”

Viktor looks like Yuuri has just slapped him with an open palm of something poignant. His eyes are round, eyebrows quirked high, the pale white slip of his mouth barely open. Then Viktor is catching his bottom lip in his teeth and he’s crumbling with tears, forehead dropping to push against all three of their hands and he’s sucking in breath like he’s dying.

A lot of people are crying about this, is what Yuuri thinks briefly. He doesn’t know precisely why Viktor Nikiforov is crying to him for mercy but there’s a beautiful human crying on him all the same. Yuuri shifts, careful of his immobilized leg, the drip in his arm, the stiff way his body moves and reaches out in a way that makes him huff and wince.

He pulls the man in, tentative in case this is a massive misstep but Viktor is putty in his arm, rolls forward to push his face into Yuuri’s shoulder instead of the hand he still holds.

Yuuri doesn’t know why this is happening. His chest is pounding with all sorts of emotions, confusion most prevalent among them and, under that, something burgeoning that makes Yuuri warm and soft in all sorts of ways. Viktor’s hair is soft against his neck, his breath and tears hot and moist, and Yuuri’s eyes slip closed as something in him settles.

Viktor is there every day after that, in so doing meeting Yuuri’s family. When the Cialdini’s are there, Celestino always seems to regard the two of them with an expression that’s puzzled as though he can’t understand why, exactly, the lead detective hasn’t gone away yet.

Yuuri can’t blame his coach, who is no longer his coach, because he doesn’t get it either. He just knows that Viktor is so much more vibrant in life than in posters and on screens and it scares Yuuri deeply because he’s getting attached. They’re becoming friends. Yuuri never makes friends this easily.

Maybe it has something to do with Viktor being the first person Yuuri saw after those two weeks of hell, or maybe it’s because he’s idolized the man since he was nine that makes his normally taciturn self want to open up. Maybe it’s because they’re both wrecked by what’s happened.  
Maybe it’s the tone in Viktor’s voice when they’re alone and he tells Yuuri he’s quit his job.  
Maybe it’s in the way the man looks at him like he can’t believe Yuuri is in front of him now, instead of a victim in polaroids and letters.

Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe. 

Either way, while the immediate depth of the attachment startles Yuuri he does his best not to let it consume him.  
Viktor will leave eventually. Yuuri is leaving himself in two weeks time because there’s no point to staying in Detroit now that he can’t do what he came here for.  
And he’s craving home. He’s craving it desperately. He wants his bed, he wants his dog, he wants the familiar bustle of the family inn to soothe him to sleep instead of the frenetic pulse of the hospital. 

So yes.  
Viktor will leave is what Yuuri thinks, right up until Viktor asks if he can go home with them.

“I need a change of scenery,” is what Viktor says, his leg bouncing where it’s crossed over his knee. “It’s probably pretty inappropriate considering...everything, but I’d really like to come with you Yuuri.”

Viktor never refers to Yuuri by his surname. Yuuri gets the feeling he never has.

“Somehow, if there’s a way to get back from all of this...it’ll be easier to do it together.”

Viktor’s eyes don’t drive Yuuri mad.

Everybody else's does.

“So if you would let me…”

Yuuri agrees.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

_Vitya,_

_I know this letter will find you in very sore shape and for that I’m sorry,as it will have been my fault. I’ve deceived you, betrayed you, and if everything works out as I’ve planned, I shall die by you._

_I am tired. I am exhausted. It was never meant to go this far. Sometimes I forget why I did it all to begin with but sometimes what you start, you just can’t stop._

_I’ve got no excuses. While I don’t understand it, I know what I’ve been doing. I know the game is not real. I know Lilia will never come back to me._

_There is nothing quite like watching the woman you’ve grown together with, have grown to love and have grown to depend on, be at one moment wonderful and alive and the very next a pulped inhuman mass, crushed by a stage hand’s ineptitude._

_I handled it badly for seven years, up until I was contacted by a cousin who had somehow not heard what happened and asked how my wife was fairing._

_I suppose you could say that was the trigger because I woke up the next morning with a hangover and a beautiful woman locked in the basement. I didn’t know what to do with her at first but it came to me shortly enough. Lilia had ideas I wanted to see through, and she was always a fan of theatrics. Hence, letters. I did have fun getting into character with those. The pictures were for my own personal pleasure though.  
On some level it was fun to share._

_I never enjoyed that I enjoyed it, and everyone I have killed, I hate. They are worms who could never compare. I don’t know why I even tried._

_But I suppose I don’t despise you. In fact I trust you deeply, enough to know that you will do what you must and put me down. Whether or not the boy in the basement is alive at that point remains to be seen but I don’t quite give a shit._

_I suppose what I mean to say is that I enjoyed our time together Vitya. It’s been a pleasure knowing you and working with you._

_Don’t be too rough on yourself, kid._

_Yours,_

_Yakov._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Japan is a bit more than a change of scenery.

It’s thrilling actually, if annoying that he can’t speak or read a whit of it, and Viktor finds himself distracted by the painful clench of depression more often than not by just exploring.

Makkachin is all too happy to come exploring with him, and Viktor had been inordinately pleased when his poor poodle had settled in almost instantly.  
It probably helped that she already had a friend with which to visit.  
Vicchan was a cute little guy, and also rather full of energy. The two poodles could spend hours sprinting after and playing with each other and it was always great fun to watch.

Viktor has a feeling he knows who the miniature poodle’s namesake is by the way Yuuri fidgets a little bit when he introduces them. He gracefully says nothing.

The dog park they’ve been going to is one that’s out of the way and not very heavily populated, putting the younger man at least a little more at ease. They have it all to themselves right now but Yuuri is still stiff beside him.

The spring is cool so far and that allows Yuuri to also pull the his hoodie up over the hat. Today it’s a blue snapback that surprised Viktor the first time he’d seen it, as it has a vivid floral pattern that had seemed out of Yuuri’s comfort zone.

Even so, Yuuri continues to swathe himself in shades of blue, even more of it now as if he’s determined to carry the colour with him every where, like it’s some sort of comfort.

Viktor tilts his head, leaning in to ponder the facemask, which apparently was not at all out of place in Japanese fashion.

“Don’t you have a hard time breathing with that?” 

Yuuri twitches like he’s just been jolted awake and looks away from the pair of dogs to blink up at him.

“Oh. No, not really. You get used to it.” Yuuri shrugs and returns his attention to their yipping animals, who look like they’re going to need a bath when they get home.

“Aaah, I’m not sure I ever could!” Viktor throws his head back on his shoulders, rolls them with distaste. “They seem hot and stuffy and uncomfortable, I don’t know how you can do it every day!”

Because it is every day. The moment Yuuri expects that he’ll be in public he covers himself in any way he can manage without being conspicuous.  
There’s a minute of silence and Viktor begins to wonder if he’d said something he shouldn’t have. Yuuri kicks at the ground with the toe of his shoe.

“I don’t like being stared at.” Is the response. There’s a lingering note of hesitation so Viktor doesn’t make to speak, not yet.  
Yuuri shrugs, looking every inch of uncomfortable as he defensively folds his arms tightly to his chest. It’s practically a hug. 

“He’d always just...look, you know? Just stare. It-I guess I still feel it. It drove me nuts, maybe....”

Viktor’s gaze flicks downward to his feet, frowning and trying not to give into the automatic guilt that besieges him the moment they begin talking about his former mentor. That’s a wound that’s always going to be sore.  
The man’s letter to him hadn’t helped matters in the least but at least it answered some questions.

Besides, Yuuri doesn’t volunteer this type of information often and Viktor doesn’t want to discourage it with a reaction of misery. He wants Yuuri to feel like he can talk to Viktor, let loose his pain and share who he is, what he thinks, what he feels. Viktor wants to know everything that runs through the smaller man’s head, a yearning that’s a constant motivation to respect what little Yuuri can give him at a time.

It’s five months into his stay in Hasetsu and Viktor is no less enamoured than he was before they’d met. Actually, it’s just gotten worse.

It’s different, getting to know a concept and getting to know a person. The reality of Yuuri is even more poignant than the image Viktor had built in his head and pulls him in ceaselessly.

But it’s also a stumbling block because he’s coming into this whatever it is with preconcieved notions and sometimes they trip him up. They both share this issue and it can lead to intense misunderstandings on either side but Yuuri hasn’t dropped him yet.

Viktor has learned that, above everything, Yuuri is a very stubborn person and the moment he has his heart set on something he’ll give it his all. Apparently this is something Viktor has earned.

He knew the younger man had been reluctant at first and at the time Viktor didn’t understand why he was pushing it himself. He should have been the first to go, the first to keep a distance out of sheer professionalism at least.

The first time, Viktor had visited with the intent to drop off flowers, apologize on behalf of the station and himself, and then put the entire thing behind him and never come back. Instead he’d been driven back again and again. Viktor would just find himself thinking of the ghost in the doorway, the antiseptic smelling one armed embrace. 

God, that embrace.

It had been shameful the way Viktor had broken down on the younger man, as if he had any right to after everything which had happened. The way he’d looked at Viktor, with eyes that stared so wide and intensely before whispering that there was nothing to be sorry for had somehow turned into the breaking point Viktor hadn’t been able to find before then.

Yuuri was a good person, the openly genuine sort that magnetized people when one got passed his aloof shyness.  
Viktor felt at once grateful and ashamed that he’d gotten to experience it so openly.

Because without the drugs the younger man was much more reticent with himself and his thoughts, present but always holding back. Viktor got the impression from the Katsuki family that this was just how Yuuri was and that what he’d been given was somewhat out of character.  
He didn’t care. He’d been given a gift that day and Viktor was determined not to let the Yuuri slip through his fingers like so many grains of sand.

He was just clingy like that.

He’d been given another gift when Yuuri asked to move into Viktor’s rented apartment just weeks prior. The dark haired man was full of surprises it seemed, always seeming to whip something out of nothing when you were least expecting it. 

They were plunging headlong into something, Viktor knew. He just didn’t know what that something was, not yet, and with Yuuri always holding back it was hard to tell.  
Moreover, the trauma hadn’t helped the visibility of what Yuuri was thinking or feeling either.

Mila had said that it seemed as if he had trouble emoting but up close Viktor had no trouble recognizing the dissociation for what it was. 

It was no surprise but it could be a little disheartening when Yuuri began to visibly withdraw, or as Yuuri put it, slip sideways.  
It was a challenge to handle, and when Yuuri wasn’t falling away he was at risk of overstimulating the second he was placed in a peopled area like a restaurant or cafe.

Viktor was pretty sure that was at least part of the reason why Yuuri had asked to move in with him. The kid’s family ran an Inn after all.

Then there’d be panic attacks, terribly violent ones that put the kid at risk of passing out just from hyperventilation alone. Viktor would need to coach him through them to avoid that, keep Yuuri’s head against his chest and breathe slow and deep in an example to follow.

And then Yuuri would disconnect from Viktor, hard, like he was ashamed that he needed help.  
Sometimes it felt like Viktor was dragging Yuuri inch by painful inch into the light.

But then Yuuri would greet Viktor with dinner and coffee when he got back from job hunting, or shake him awake after a nightmare with a mug of soothing green tea and a patient, easy quiet.

Or he’d leave water and tylenol on Viktor’s bedstand when Viktor had too much to drink or had cried too hard. Once he’d taken the poodles to the groomers all by himself, and Viktor hadn’t even thought to go to but the dogs ‘looked like they could use a trim’. Yuuri hadn’t hesitated to bring Makka with him, paid for the both of them out of his own wallet.

Yuuri’s affection was made up of small gestures, subtle and thoughtful tokens of appreciation and warmth. They weren’t overwhelming or pushy in the least, though Yuuri sometimes felt they might be, the silent and patient attention feeling like a balm to the open wound that was Viktor Nikiforov.

It was a lot of take and give between two very unhealthy people.

It was nice to feel like you were healing with somebody though.

“Well, no.” Yuuri broke Viktor from his thoughts with a voice that was small and contemplative as he drug the mask down to his chin.

“Or, yes, the staring drove me mad but the dress…”

The young man tilted his head to follow Makkachin and Vicchan. He was present, Viktor noticed with mild relief. It hurt to see Yuuri go away.

“The dress?” He encouraged when nothing was said, cocking his head to give the shorter man his full attention. Yuuri’s eyes flicked to him, then away.

“It…” A tongue quickly snaked out to wet chapped lips. Viktor needed to get the younger man chapstick. 

“I’m...It’s hard to say. But it felt like he was stealing something from me, when I woke up wearing it. I think that’s what, uh, pushed me over the edge so to speak. I think it’s why…”

There was a shivering breath. Viktor understood what was being gotten at and restrained his discomforted shuffle.

“And now, you know we’re, what, five months later? And I-I still feel it, that, but it’s like, this should be gone by now. It’s been so long.” A hard sigh rocked the line of Yuuri’s shoulders. 

“Like I should be over it. It’s done, and it could’ve been so much worse but it’s...Am I always going to feel like this? Is he always going to be there Viktor?”

Yuuri met his eyes and the look in the younger man’s face sucked the breath right from Viktor’s chest.  
He paused to think, eyeing the mildly red hue of Yuuri’s eyes, the way it clashed against the predominate blue of everything else.

“...You know,” Viktor hoped this was at least relevant. 

“When I wrecked my leg, I also got a pretty severe concussion out of it. I hit the ice, right here,” He tapped the center of his forehead. “That piece of your brain is called the prefrontal lobe and it’s where a lot of our short term memory happens.”

Yuuri was quiet, letting Viktor get at whatever he was trying to say. Yuuri was good at that, good at waiting for all he needed to move and be.

“It’s been ten years but I’m still dealing with the ramifications of it. It’s why I carry my notepad around, writing it all down so I won’t forget. I guess…”

Viktor reached up tentatively, letting Yuuri decide whether or not he wanted to accept the touch, and when his arm wrapped around the other’s shoulders it felt like a reward.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t be impatient with yourself. You’ll figure it out, and you’ll figure out ways to cope. And maybe it’ll still be with you ten years later but it won’t control you anymore.”

“...Alright.” Yuuri’s voice shook a little and he took in another, deeper breath. “Okay. I-...Thank you, Viktor. For everything.”

“Yeah.” Viktor nodded, feeling a rush up his spine as the other man leaned in. 

The poodles had finally tired it seemed and were trotting back over, the both of them grinning big doggy smiles. They were all over in mud and Viktor was not looking forward to bathing them.

“You’re welcome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omgggggg that's it, it's done q0q I'm so bad at finishing things so this is a huge accomplishment for me. I'm so glad you all enjoyed this with me as much as you did! Every one of you are marvelous, I love you to bits, and I hope that this epilogue is at least partially satisfying.
> 
> I do have plans in mind for a sequel but I also start school again on friday (hence my banging the last few chapters out so quick) so we'll see. Whether or not there'll be a plot similar to this one Idk yet but we'll see. Mostly i just want these kids to feel better.
> 
> There were a few things that I changed or found there wasn't so much room for. I expected Yuuri to be Much more openly manipulative with killerYakov but in the end it didn't feel possible between the SSRIs and their lack of interaction. And in the end I'm kind of glad it did go the way it went cus Yuuri's identity has been hecked with enough already, and forcing himself to do something so intrusive and out of character would've just twisted that further.
> 
> I also planned for the majority of the difference Not to be in how quickly everything was going, but for Yuuri to be in there for over three weeks. It wouldve gone hand in hand with there being more interaction between he and Yakov, and I also felt like it was beginning to drag too hard already.
> 
> Like, I was running out of things for Viktor to do by chapter three man lmao the moment i noticed that it was all 'oh shit i gotta quicken this up or he's just gonna be doing a whole lot of nothing!!!'
> 
> Viktor's character arc was pretty much how i intended for it to be though, i feel satisfied in how that swung out.
> 
> some bg info  
> Dan was named for Chief Dan George  
> It really surprised me that so many people thought it was Georgi or JJ cus they weren't established at all? rip evil witch and jjstyle  
> It took me until about chapter 3 or so to decide for sure it was Yakov who was the killer tho. rip lilia  
> I had to look up dead and gangrenous legs and i hope you're happy cus it was gross  
> a lot of this was written from personal exp, mostly in the medication bits and Viktor's knee and memory loss, and Yuuri's dissociation and 'omg so hungry why'. Write what you know!  
> Yuuri is dmab genderfluid if there's anyone confused about that.  
> chapter titles are from Lana del Reys 'honeymoon' in case anybodys curious. I thought it was appropriate ouo
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nB7CQRni50 <<< is what started it all. It's knife shoes. Simon Beckett's Chemistry of Death and Criminal Minds were also pretty big inspirations too.


End file.
